


Save My Soul

by 221b_hound



Series: Guitar Man [100]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BAMF John, Doctor John Watson, Gen, John Watson in Afghanistan, John Watson's military history, John's medals, John-centric, Military John, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence, but it's all going to be okay, graphic descriptions of warzone violence and death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-02
Updated: 2014-12-02
Packaged: 2018-02-19 13:54:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 37,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2390756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And old army buddy of John's needs help, and so Sherlock takes on the case for John's sake. John saved Bill Murray's life, you see, and also Major Ferguson's. This is the story of how the John Watson we know was made on the battlefield. This is the story of the doctor who became a soldier and was broken and then healed by an unlikely friendship. This, for John, is where it all began.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Little Light and Shade

**Author's Note:**

> This is a mulitchapter story still being written - with a lot of help from the wonderful Kizzia, who is Britpicking and providing military background knowledge that I lack. All the mistakes remain mine, however.
> 
> Note that the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers haven't been called that since 1904, and that the unit became part of the Royal Fusiliers proper in 1958. I'm keeping the name here because of the canon references. I'm also taking a lot of liberties with real army situations, again to try to fit in with the mess that is Canon John Watson war history references. 
> 
> Finally, the story title (and the title of the first chapter) is from Alex Lloyd's song of that name. Chapter titles will come from other Alex Lloyd songs and be marked as such as I go.

John stood at the window, hands clasped behind his back, looking down on Baker Street in the winter twilight. All was calm down there today. No clients pacing, anxiously building up their courage to knock. No police car pulling up to the kerb, disgorging Greg or Dimmock or one of the others who regularly consulted them. No parked black sedan indicating Mycroft had a favour to ask. A man walking a Pekingese dog was as exciting as it got this evening, and at this moment, that suited John just fine.

He had been worried about Ford, and Violet too, since Ford’s little… incident, with the box John kept in his third drawer, two months ago. But Mary and Rupe both assured him that their little girl wasn’t overly concerned. She seemed to trust that all four of her very practical parents had the situation in hand.

“If you get sad I’ll hug you, Dad,” Violet had told him over Skype, and when she and her mums had returned to London a week later, she’d wrapped her arms around him and kissed his face hard until he was pretty sure there’d be permanent marks, which he didn’t at all mind. Then she’d done the same to Sherlock, until Sherlock had tickled her into submission.

Then, bless his daughter for a genius, she’d squished Ford into a hug so hard he’d had to beg her with wheezing breath to desist, and then they’d withdrawn into a corner to debrief, the way they always did.

He knew Ford was all right, though, because Sally and Mycroft had told him what he’d said to them the next day. Had thanked him for giving their boy a framework and vocabulary for managing the things he had observed and deduced.

Sherlock hadn’t thanked him in words. Sherlock almost never did. What Sherlock had done, after Ford went home that day, was to look at John intently, pick up his violin and play melodies that were as good as, and often better than, words anyway.

John didn’t need thanks. If anything, he owed Ford a debt. It had been a long time since he’d tried to articulate how the old wounds still surfaced at times. He and Sherlock were both less plagued than they once had been, it was true, but finding words to help Ford had made him realise how far they’d come. And how irrelevant those old wounds were now. He still had bad dreams sometimes, he still had bad moments, like that stupid thing with the sugar bomb the other week (and Sherlock had been right to laugh – it had been stupid. Horrible and funny, too, but also ridiculous).

But they were all just ghost and shadows, those dreams and memories. Scars that ached sometimes, but he was long healed and whole, and phantom pain could twinge but it couldn’t hurt him any more.

John drew a breath, held it, and exhaled slowly. He caught a glimpse of a familiar figure entering the street from the direction of Regent’s Park and smiled.

He raised his head slightly, away from the street, to regard the skyline. The anniversary of this painful past was a reminder of how much he had, now. This was London, here and now. _His_ London. _Their_ London, of crime-solving and blogging and music and family.

John heard the door open but didn’t turn. He listened while Sherlock took off his scarf and coat and hung them on the hook. He sensed Sherlock pause on the carpet to regard John’s back, and his clasped hands, thoughtfully. He could practically hear Sherlock deducing and coming to conclusions in a matter of seconds.

“Sixteen years ago,” Sherlock said quietly, “You returned to London after your medical discharge.”

John smiled softly, and he knew Sherlock could see that smile in his reflection in the window.

“It was a pretty awful December, as I recall,” John said, “But it improved. A month later, I met you.”

John could see Sherlock’s answering smile in the reflection.

“That’s not all,” said Sherlock slowly, “You had a… call, today. Someone seeking our assistance.” He frowned. “An old army friend.”

“Should I ask how you even know that?”

Sherlock shrugged. “Your notebook is on the table, still open, with notes, but the handwriting is messy. You should just put the caller on speakerphone if you’re making notes at the same time. Your bearing is also a shade more military this evening, and you’re flexing your left hand, which you mostly only do when you’re thinking of your old injuries or something in relation to them.” Then Sherlock grinned. “And also Mrs Hudson overheard some of your end of the conversation. She wants to know who ‘Bill, you old bastard’ might be.”

Sherlock turned towards the kitchen as John grimaced slightly. Sherlock didn’t even look at the notes John had made, only pottered about taking something out of the cupboard.

“Sherlock…”

“Yes, I’ll take on the case,” Sherlock said matter-of-factly, handing him a double shot of scotch in a short glass. Sherlock held another glass of scotch between his fingers and was rolling the fluid gently around the glass.

“Even if it’s only a one?” John asked with a glint of humour.

“Even if, though I suspect it’s more a six.”

“Maybe a seven,” said John, taking the glass, “Though you know I’m not always a good judge.”

“One. Seven. It doesn’t matter. We’ll do it.”

“You don’t even know what it is yet.”

“You can tell me the details in a moment. First, a toast.”

“To survival,” John said, raising the glass, but Sherlock shook his head.

“Wrong toast, John.”

John frowned and studied Sherlock’s face, and then his expression cleared and he smiled.

“To… prospering,” he said, eyes glowing with the knowledge. He (in fact _they,_ he and Sherlock) had not merely survived. They had _thrived_ in their survival. They had built on and grown full into their lives. They had become more than they had been. They had _multiplied_.

“To prospering,” agreed Sherlock. He tapped the edge of his glass against John’s, and they drank.

 


	2. So Much For the Normal Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It took a long time for John to work out what to do with his life. It's hard to work things out, when you have no support, no money and too many sides of yourself to work out how to be all of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is from the Alex Lloyd song, Burn.
> 
> Thanks to Kizzia for the help and feedback.

After his mother died, John Watson never felt like he had much control. His life went haywire and there was nothing he could do about it. He certainly had no influence over his father’s drinking or, later, Harry’s. All he could do was endure. Until the band. There, he had control. There, _he_ called the shots.

John spent the year after high school writing and playing music, and shouting his heart out to the crowd. He’d never really planned much beyond the next gig, the first album – but then Gladstone’s Collar fell apart just on the cusp of something greater. John could put up with a lot of things, but he’d rather chuck it all than put up with Bean and Kelly screwing around for one minute longer. Do it properly or not at all, he’d said, and when they’d failed to take it seriously enough to do it properly, John walked out on it all. The only control he’d had.

Time anyway, he’d decided, to rein in all that turmoil and follow the other dream he’d had and thought impossible – medicine. Well, money or no, he’d made the marks in his A-levels, his university application had been accepted, and he would do this thing. He would make it happen, whatever his father said.

What his father said, when John announced his intentions, was ‘No’.

“I’m not paying for you to study. You’ve given up this music nonsense, so you can get a fucking job, son.”

Jack was, of course, drunk.

“I’ll work as a doctor,” John said stiffly, “When I graduate from university.”

“You won’t get a penny from me to do it,” Jack’s tone was ugly, “And if you’re under this roof, you’ll work and pay your share.”

“Of course you don’t have any bloody money,” John replied, voice rising to cover his disappointment. Somehow, he’d still hoped that his father cared enough to help, “You and Harry _drank_ it all.”

“Think you’re better than us, do you?” Jack snarled, lurching towards his boy with his fingers curling into his palms.

John didn’t reply, but he stood his ground, shoulders squared, chin jutting out. He wasn’t going to run this time. He be _damned_ if he would.

“You little shit.” Jack swung and John intercepted the blow, grabbing his father by the wrist.

“No,” said John, low and gravelly, trying to conceal the tremor, “You don't get to do that to me any more. Try it and I'll knock you into next fucking week.”

The next blow – from Jack’s other hand - caught him though, a backhanded slap to the mouth, drawing blood. John pushed hard and Jack stumbled backwards, tripping over the umbrella stand, cursing.

 _Now_ was a good time to run. John darted to his room up the stairs, slammed the door shut, and barricaded it with his wardrobe. He wiped the blood from his lip with his T-shirt and then got down to business. He pulled shirts and trousers out of the now lopsided wardrobe; underwear from the drawer. Shoes from under the bed. He filled his sports bag and a backpack with them, along with sheets of music and a handful of picks.

The door rattled with heavy blows, and Jack yelled abuse through it, telling John everything he was going to do to the ungrateful little fucker once he got through that _fucking door_.

John threw the bags out of the window to the ground, a floor below, then slung his best guitar over his back and climbed carefully down the water pipes (a favourite escape method of his since he was eight years old) to join his worldly goods. Maybe Harry could help him get the rest of his stuff later. She was a mean drunk, but they still got on when she was sober. He might at least be able to get his other guitars back.

He never did. Jack hocked them, or maybe Harry did. John had given up music by then, so it didn’t matter so much, except he could have done with the money.

John never got anything else from the house either. He never went back. Instead, he found a tiny, shitty room to share in a horrible fleapit of a house with eight other students, and he got a terrible low-paid job, and he applied himself to becoming a doctor, without anybody’s help, which he didn’t need anyway, _screw them_.

It wasn’t easy. It was, some months, almost impossible. University itself might be free, but books, accommodation and food weren’t.

“John.”

Eighteen months in, and it was starting to wear him down.

“Hey, John.”

The constant choice between keeping his squalid room, getting the books he needed, and eating that week.

“Johnny. Hey. You listening?”

John, head propped up in his hands, looked up at his rugby teammate Jai Banerjee. “Sorry, Jai. What is it?”

“You, mate. You look like you’re going to fall down. I know Flanagan took you down hard in the last quarter, but you usually bounce back like a bloody Jack Russell terrier.”

John laughed. “Flanagan’s not a problem. I bounce all right. Just a bit tired.”

“Study grinding you down, huh?”

“Not really. It’s hard, but I like it. Challenging, you know. Stimulating.”

Jai shook his head, like John Watson was a mad bugger for loving his medical textbooks so much. “Whenever I see you off the field, you’ve either got your head down studying or working that shitty job at the off-licence. What do you do for fun?”

John spread his hands to display his rugby jumper in all its grass-stained, muddy glory. “This is it, Jai. This is my fun.” And it was. Rugby was John’s main indulgence, and the best way he had of burning off the locked-down restlessness and anger that had nowhere else to go since he’d given up the band.

“Sad bastard.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Coming to the pub, then?”

John grimaced and slumped against the wall. He’d have loved to, but the rent was due, and he had a new textbook on hold that was essential for the new subject. He should have picked it up three weeks ago. He had just enough cash for it now. “Not today.”

Jai frowned. “Look… John, I know it’s none of my business but… are you doing okay?”

John swallowed and didn’t reply. He’d been living off boiled pasta and tomato sauce for a fortnight now. But that wasn’t easy to talk about. Nothing about his life was easy to talk about.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he lied.

“You’re just… looking… a bit on the skinny side, if you don’t mind my saying. The lads are starting to wonder if you have an eating disorder.” Jai grinned a bit, to show he was joking, but the concern lingered.

John smiled wanly.

“Look, I know you’re studying hard, but that job is rubbish and that prick Barlow doesn’t pay you enough. You know what I do for cash, right?”

“Yeah, you make blue movies in the dead of night on Hampstead Heath.”

“John, I’m serious.” Jai gave his friend a steely look. “Army Reserves. It’s mostly on the weekends. Good pay, you learn stuff and you still have plenty of time for study. You should try it.”

John’s stomach chose that moment to rumble audibly, and he flinched. “Maybe I will,” he said into the awkward silence.

“They’ve got a recruitment booth set up this weekend. I can show you what’s what, if you like. It’s good fun, actually. Lots of running around outside, and you get to blow shit up if you play your cards right. Besides,” Jai grinned, “The birds love a bloke in uniform.”

John gave a cheery laugh, as though the birds and not the prospect of at least one meal containing protein was the drawcard. “Yeah, sure. Why not?”

“Just don’t tell ‘em about my sideline in Hampstead Heath movies, yeah?” Jai winked and tapped the side of his nose, and John laughed.

Half an hour after visiting the booth, John had signed up for the Reserves.

Logically, he should have signed on for one of the medical roles, but John wasn’t always logical. He wanted something _different,_ something as a contrast to his life at university. And he did _not_ want a potential military career. He just wanted something fun to do that paid well and gave him a break from all the Latin terminology and anatomy. He wanted something to throw his body into, not just his mind. He wanted distraction, and risk, and adrenalin. Something to fill the void that giving up music had left in him. Something to hush up the howling that lived down deep inside.

So John joined the Reserves as an infantry soldier, and took to it like a duck to water. To his own surprise, he enjoyed the discipline; the structure it gave him. It taught him to maintain control and to channel all the unruly emotion that sometimes threatened his equilibrium; it gave the anger somewhere productive to go.

John didn’t want to admit it, but he felt safe there, in the army. Safe in a way home had not been safe since his mother died.

It was in the Army Reserves where John learned that he had a good eye, and could shoot straight, and that many women did indeed like a man in uniform (or rather, getting him out of it). None of the women stayed for long. John’s time was too taken up with study and his AR duties to spare much time for relationship stuff. Anyway, John had what many of them said were _commitment issues_. (Ella would much later identify them as _trust_ issues. No matter. It came down to the same thing. Even if he’d had the time to spare for someone special, John did not want to give his heart away, just so someone could kick it, or mock it, or die horribly and take his heart with them.)

John enjoyed the reserves, but he didn’t really see it as a long term option. His aim was to get qualified, get working, get _earning_ , get out there and making the difference he felt sure he could make. Surely he had something better to offer the world than his pain; he had someone better to _be_ than the person his father and sister told him he was.

John started his post-graduation internship, but he kept up his weekends with the Reserves. He qualified as a GP within a few years and found a position in a suburban clinic.

It was good, he told himself. It was fine. All just _fine_.

No, actually. It wasn’t.

Doctor John Watson, GP, was bored out of his wits; a problem only alleviated on those weekends in khaki.

Still, it wasn’t too late to do something about that. John’s dormant interest in trauma care was rekindled by an accident during live firing exercises – Jai managed to shoot himself in the calf. John provided emergency first aid until the medics were able to get to them.

John felt a little guilty that he’d found Jai’s mishap so inappropriately engaging; but it revived his interest in the field of surgery. He was still haunted by the knowledge that his mother had lived for long enough for someone to hold her hand and talk to her as she died in the tangled wreckage of her car; and by the notion that perhaps if the right care had reached her sooner, she may have survived. Probably not. But _maybe._ The doubt plagued him. The tantalising promise that things may have been very different for his family, if only, if only…

Just before his 31st birthday, suburban GP John Watson enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps, ready to serve and to study as he did so. He began his foundational studies to qualify as a surgeon.

He told his father. It did not go well.

At 32 years old and still in the early phases of his studies for a whole new career, Second Lieutenant John Watson was shipped out for his first detachment to Camp Basra, the British Army’s new base in Iraq, with his father’s scorn ringing in his ears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The details of John's first detachment have been updated to fit some Real World facts, as the Brits didn't start operating in Afghanistan until 2003-4.


	3. There's No Telling When You Need a Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bill Murray comes to see John and Sherlock. Sherlock learns something new about John.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is from the Alex Lloyd song, Distant Light.
> 
> Many thanks to Kizzia for reading and feedback on the chapter. All my mistakes I gather possessively to myself, however.

John reached up to put the key in the lock just as Mrs Hudson opened the door to him and Sherlock returning from the Yard.

“There you are,” she said, “You have a visitor in my kitchen.” Her voice dropped to a stage whisper. “Stairs were a bit much for him.”

John’s mouth pulled briefly into an unhappy moue at her tone, reading it for pity. Bill had been through a lot but he didn’t need anyone’s _pity_. John knew he wasn’t being entirely fair. Of course the stairs were a problem for Bill. Their place wasn’t exactly mobility-friendly, and Mrs Hudson often hosted potential clients who couldn’t make it up the seventeen stairs to 221b.

“He tells such funny stories, though,” she continued brightly, as though unaware of John’s flash of irritation, “Mostly about you, dear.”

“Does he?” Sherlock’s face lit up in anticipation and John felt just that fraction less defensive on Bill’s behalf.

John entered Mrs Hudson’s kitchen ahead of Sherlock, and grinned to see Bill Murray at the table. Bill’s crutches were propped against the wall next to him and he’d stretched his legs – one of them made of titanium and plastic – in front of him. His left hand held a cup of tea; his right held a homemade biscuit between his thumb and forefinger. The rest of his right hand terminated at the knuckles.

“Telling tales out of school on me, Bill, you old bastard! Don’t get up.” John greeted him with an expansive grin, “How the fuck are you? Sorry we’re a bit late. Sherlock spotted that some little scrapper brought in on petty theft charges was the witness we’d been looking for in another case, and there was a bit of a to-do.”

Bill laughed, knowing full well that with John Watson ‘a bit of a to-do’ could mean anything from an argument with a vending machine to a full blown firefight against an insurgent cell with accompanying heavy shelling.

“John! Only the stories that leave you looking like a mad bugger, which is most of them. You are looking good for an old man.”

“Old man, bollocks. Whippersnapper.” Bill was seven years John’s junior.

Bill grinned past John’s shoulder to the tall man who was watching the exchange with reserve. “And the great Sherlock Holmes. Thanks so much for taking me on. I know it’s a bit weird. But you know John. The Surgeon never let anybody down his whole life.”

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. John looked a bit uncomfortable.

“Didn’t he ever tell you his old nickname? John ‘The Surgeon’ Watson – used a sniper rifle like a bloody scalpel after he came to us from the RAMC. Never wasted a bullet or a life if he could help it.”

John schooled his expression to blankness. He’d never told Sherlock about that. He hadn’t minded the epithet so much when he was with the Fusiliers – he’d prided himself on his precision with his weapon. He had no interest in killing for its own sake. When it had been required, his mantra had always been ‘how many lives will I save with this life?’

After his medical discharge, it was just one of the many things of his military career about which he was so ambivalent.

Bill seemed oblivious to John’s discomfort. Instead, Bill’s expression went serious for a moment. “This guy saved my life,” he said to Sherlock, almost reverently, “Twice, in fact. Iraq and again in Afghanistan, hey Doc.”

“Yes, well, he has a propensity for that sort of thing,” said Sherlock dismissively, and that made John smile. “Your letter said you had a problem.”

“Ah,” said Bill, “Not _me_ , exactly.”

“Then what,” said Sherlock impatiently, “ _Exactly_?”

Bill looked up at John. “It’s the Major. I think Robert Ferguson’s in deep, deep trouble.”


	4. A Cheerleader Squad by the Side of the Road

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Second Lieutenant John Watson is nearing the end of his first tour in Iraq. When he goes out to lend a medical hand to some men wounded in an ambush, he gets more than he bargained for. The attack is renewed, the ranking officers are all out of commission, and there he is, a GP, in command of an infantry unit who may well die before help arrives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is from the Alex Lloyd song, What A Year. 
> 
> Particular and huge thanks to Kizzia's for her exemplary assistance with this chapter.

Near the end of his first six month tour in Iraq, John was getting bored. The posting had offered challenge enough at the start, getting the hospital set up as the base exploded into life (occasionally literally) around it, but essentially life at Basra had become four parts boredom to one part frantic, adrenalin-pumping activity. John often felt he'd be happier with a 3:2 ratio. Maybe even a 2:3.

He quietly felt a bit bad about thinking of the increasing number of military clashes – and the attendant need for medical aid – that way. Nevertheless, too much downtime made him restless. With the field hospital at Camp Basra now ready to play its part in this invasion, there wasn’t enough for him to do. Study could only occupy so much time before all the Latin and the anatomical diagrams blurred and became meaningless. Time away from the books was essential to let it all sink in.

John missed his guitar, and sometimes borrowed someone else’s, but mostly he left the music alone. It reminded him of things he’d rather not think about.

He also watched television, or rather, engaged in robust arguments with people about what was on the television. This pastime was often hilarious and got him locked out of the rec room on more than one occasion, though he behaved for the rugby, which he watched avidly. He played rugby too, when they could scratch up enough people to make two teams and free space to do it in. Running around and tackling people was good for all that uneasy energy of his.

In all honesty, John thought there was probably something wrong with him, that he liked the mayhem of emergencies so much. He prided himself on organising a well-prepped surgery, but he loved it when the siren went, or word came in that casualties were on the way. He certainly didn’t enjoy the pain and the blood – he was well aware of the human suffering that augured the welcome break to routine. It was definitely not the _suffering_ that he enjoyed, though it was true that he was good at alleviating it.

John tried to think it was that he enjoyed imposing order on the chaos; but he suspected it was a two-way thing. He liked the status quo to be shaken up, too. He liked that it demanded so much of him, and that he could deliver what was demanded. Unlike the rest of his life – the death of his mother, the alcohol-fuelled violence of his father and acid sniping of his sister, even the sheer madness of the band – _here_ he could take control. And with control, he could do good; make things better instead of worse; be _useful_ – and not the failure his father saw.

Sometimes he could wrangle an hour or so with one of the infantrymen who came through, convince them to take him out for some target practice. John missed exercising that skill from his time with the Reserves; getting down in the dirt, grime on his skin, cordite in the grooves of his fingers;getting out of his head for a while, and into the zen-like calm of aim-relax-fire. No call for those skills these days, really. Medical personnel were non-combatants except in self-defence or defence of their patients, a role made official by the Geneva Convention. It was a good rule, too. There for good reasons.

John wasn’t really interested in going out and shooting people. He just enjoyed being able to do something else that he was good at. Shooting at targets brought him to a calm centre, somehow. It filtered out all the extraneous data and brought the moment down to just one thing. The line from his hand to the distant point at the end of the sights. A direct line of causality for which he alone was responsible.

The sharp-shooting medic came as a bit of a surprise to most of the infantry guys. One of them, Lieutenant Oliver Miller of The Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, now made a point of taking John out for practice whenever he was passing through.

John liked Ollie Miller – a good humoured man, ready with a ridiculous anecdote, a terrible joke, a cigarette (which John declined) or a chocolate bar (which he took; he'd never quite got over those early, hungry months at university) at all times. Ollie could sing, too, and their voices blended nicely. They were a hit at karaoke and were cheerfully dubbed Timon and Pumbaa by their mess-mates. Ollie – tall, swarthy and barrel-chested as he belted out rock and pop in a warm baritone and unfailingly comical falsetto – and his short, slim, intense mate with the killer tenor who played air guitar like he actually knew how to play a real one.

When the next call came that casualties were headed in, John launched straight into his routine. Not much needed doing at this stage, of course. His team kept an emergency-ready hospital – all they needed now were the patients.

Antsy, restless, John ran out to the airfield where the Chinook was about to take off and collect the most badly injured. He itched to dance from foot to foot, but his professionalism stopped him. Instead he stood stock still and took a deep breath, hands clasped behind his back.

Captain Amos stepped up beside him.

“You heard the news then, Watson?”

“Sir?”

“It’s your friends from the Fifth. Ambush, apparently. Two dead. Four badly wounded, including their medic, plus one more with minor wounds.”

John swallowed. He hadn’t heard. His thoughts flew to Ollie. Ollie’s mate Anton, who was supposed to get married at the end of this tour. Lance Corporal Tom Okenado, who got teased and cheered in equal measure for his excellent impersonations of Lenny Henry. He’d had drinks with them only a few days back. “I hadn’t heard that, sir.”

“Ah…”

“Captain Amos, permission to go with the chopper, sir?”

“Second Lieutenant Watson, anyone would think you _want_ to be bloody shot at.”

“Their medic’s wounded. I can start to provide treatment for the wounded on the way back, sir.”

“Yes, all right, piss off, try not to get a bullet in your brain. The army’s paying a lot for its use.”

But John had the sense that his Captain had intended to send him with the evac team anyway, and he wouldn’t have done that unless the shooting was over.

“Sir!” Second Lieutenant John Watson snapped to attention and gave the Captain a sharp salute, then ran to the Chinook and buckled in as it took off.

He was handed a spare helmet, an armoured vest, headphones and then given a shouted rundown of the situation over the roar of the blades and the air whistling through the open sides.

It seemed the patrol, on their way back to their Forward Operating Base, had been caught with a pair of perfectly timed IEDs, taking out the first and last armoured trucks of the convoy – the Warriors, with their cannons and guns. The two WMIK land-rovers in between had been trapped on the road, and heavy mortar and small arms fire from the enemy position behind a rocky outcrop on the hillside had kept the survivors pinned down behind the wreckage. They’d held out until they realised the mortar fire had ceased. Once the insurgents had run out of shells, Lieutenant Miller – now the senior officer on the ground - with his handful of men, had taken the enemy position.

The firefight had been short but intense. The insurgents who’d launched the ambush were reportedly either dead – there were five confirmed kills – or fled, and the evacuation team was cleared to land and collect the wounded.

John nodded at the news and, as the Chinook landed, grabbed hold of two field kits. IEDs, gunfire, mortars: God knew what he’d find, or in how many pieces. He leapt out of the Chinook and ran to the row of wounded. Captain Scofield he could see, shrapnel wounds to his legs and face, along with a lance corporal with burns who was crying for his mum, poor bastard, and a private who was unconscious, head bandaged and bloodied, his punctured helmet at his side.

The harried private looking after them seemed immensely relieved to see a doctor arrive, though he didn’t rise. His hands were too busy trying to stem the flow of blood from his patient’s wounds. The patient was the unit’s medic, lacerated with shrapnel wounds to the throat and upper body, with burns down both legs from hip to ankle.

There was no time for pleasantries or salutes – John dropped to his knees beside the bleeding medic and did what he could.

“I’ve got you,” he said to the wounded man, whose brown eyes were wide circles of fear. “You, fingers there,” he directed the private, and the private shifted his already bloody fingers to press on a pulse point. John worked swiftly, while around them the rest of the chopper crew loaded the Captain, the lance corporal and the unconscious private into the helicopter. He managed to stop the most dangerous bleeding, and once those wounds were stable, did what he could for the burns.

The chopper crew were passing him to fetch the fifth wounded man, who was clearly conscious and talking, when John stopped them.

“No, get this fellow on board and go – he can’t wait. I’ll keep the other guy stable until you can get back to me.” He turned to the white-faced private, “You, Private – he blinked at this name tag - O’Hanlon, go with the patient. Keep an eye on that bandage and if he starts to bleed again, get your fingers right on the pulse point, just like you’ve been doing. Okay?” The private stared at him. John patted him on the shoulder. “You’re okay, O’Hanlon,” he said with confidence, “And you can do this. You already _have_ , and he’s still breathing because of that. You’ll be fine.”

O’Hanlon nodded, and with renewed colour in his face, he helped the crew place the medic – his friend – on the stretcher and followed him into the aircraft.

John hurried across to the last patient, lying on his stomach in the shallow trench by the side of the road where the Fifth had taken cover, just opening his mouth to greet the man as the chopper started to rise.

Then all hell broke loose.

Machine gun fire spewed across the ground and instinct kicked in before John quite knew what was happening – he dived to the ground then crawled over to the patient while all around him men threw themselves towards cover and then popped up to return fire. A much louder explosion cracked nearby and someone shouted, “Fuck, mortars again!”

John kept his head down a moment longer then risked a look. He’d ended up in the shallow ditch a few yards from the wounded man, the burnt out wreck of a Warrior giving him some cover. He strained up to see what else was happening.

Up the hillside, a sergeant was sprawled in the dirt and a private was hunkered down beside him, firing into the bushes on the far right of their position. There was a brief lull and the private seized his bleeding companion by the arms and dragged him roughly down the hill towards the unit’s precarious position. The gunfire started up again, and private went down too, howling in agony as blood spurted from his thigh.

Behind John, another mortar explosion rocked the ground, and he twisted his head to see the chopper rising clear away. Good. It wasn’t equipped for a firefight and it had men on board who needed urgent medical attention. He could see Private O’Hanlon inside the door, waving to him, shouting something. Hopefully that meant they’d radioed for more back up. That was good. Support, air or ground, would be very, very good.

 _Right_. So here he was, in the middle of a firefight.

Adrenalin sang through John’s veins and his heart beat as though it would burst. Yet for all that, his mind felt so very, very calm.

_Not bored now, are you Watson?_

Disregarding the explosions and the whine of bullets, John took hold of his medical kit and crawled towards his patient. He slid alongside him, grabbed fistfuls of the man’s uniform and then John braced his feet against the ground and shoved, sliding them both further behind cover. The wounded man hissed in pain.

Confident that there was now a fraction more room to move, John knelt low beside the soldier and began to cut away the blood-soaked seat of his khaki pants.

“Hang on,” he said, “Won’t be a minute…” John glanced at the insignia, “Sergeant.”

“Hey doc,” the sergeant grinned, blood staining his teeth, “Welcome to the real Iraq. The name’s Bill Murray. I’ll be your tour guide if we don’t get our bollocks shot off in the next ten minutes.”

“I appreciate the welcome party, Bill. What’s up?”

“Shot in the fucking arse, sir,” Bill blinked, “Then I face-planted and split my lip.” He spat out a little blood.

John tore open supplies, ripped away the interfering cloth and assessed the wound. In the fleshy part of the right gluteus, shallow but messy. “That’s what you get for mooning the enemy, Sergeant Murray.”

Bill laughed, then coughed. “Funny fucker,” he said, and winced, but then he grinned again. “It’s embarrassing as fuck, is what it is, sir.”

“Nah, it’s a fine Scottish tradition, mooning the enemy,” said John, cleaning the wound so he could see it more clearly. “Didn’t you watch _Braveheart_?”

“Christ, no,” Bill barked another laugh, “That Mel Gibson is a wanker.”

The bullet was still lodged in the flesh, and behind it a scrap of cloth, a danger for infection which could be deadlier than the initial wound. He’d have to get it out. Sergeant Bill Murray was lucky, though. The bullet had stopped well short of the artery. The sergeant wouldn’t be able to sit comfortably for a while, but he’d be fit for duty again in a month or so. Provided they lived long enough to get back to base.

John used a small pair of forceps to remove the bullet, and tweezers to clear the khaki shreds in the base of the wound.

Bill yelped at the pain and then cursed. “Cunting mother _fucker_.”

“That’s the spirit,” said John, cleaning the site, treating it with antiseptic and then wadding the gory dent with gauze.

Bill laughed hoarsely. “Not you, sir.”

“Yeah, me,” John disagreed, “I’m the son of a bitch digging a bullet out of your delicate arse.”

“You’re not the son of a bitch who put it there, sir.”

Another spray of gunfire came towards them, then the whump of a mortar, and John curled low over Bill’s body. He hadn’t the first idea how more insurgents had crept up on their position. Maybe they were like Tolkein dwarves, living under the bloody hills and rocks until they popped up to give them grief. _Jesus_. This was supposed to have been a simple in-and-out thing, not bloody High Noon in Death Valley.

He risked another glance, despite the continuing fire. Oh, shit, that wasn't good. The enemy looked to be bedded down in two positions – a hollow behind the shrubs, where bullets and the occasional mortar kept the unit pinned; and back at the rocks where the original ambush had begun. Seriously, God knew where the bastards had been hiding, but they had taken up the slack of their dead comrades with a vengeance.

Defensive fire came from the rest of the Fifth, ranged along the roadside ditch behind the wreckage of the convoy. The WMIKs stuck between the hulks of the Warriors looked salvageable, but anyone trying to drive them would have his head blown off, surely, before he got far. And even if they could salvage one or both vehicles, then what? The barrage of bullets and mortars limited the options.

Up the hill, the private with the leg wound was still moaning and trying to keep his hands clamped over the bleeding injury.

John gathered his kit and went into a low crouch, but he knew it was suicide to try to reach him.

A bullet pinged overhead and John ducked down again. He angled his head to see what was going on up the line. John felt the relief flood through him as he saw a broad-shouldered, solid chunk of a lieutenant. _Ollie._

As he watched, Lieutenant Miller popped up, and poured sustained fire up the hill while two of his men darted out from cover, ran to their wounded mate and dragged him back to relative safety. John patted Bill’s shoulder in reassurance, then dashed down the line to tend to the man’s thigh wound. It was soon-to-be-married Anton. John got a tourniquet on the leg and then started to cut away the bloodied uniform below, so he could begin to work.

“Doc Watson?” Anton’s voice was tremulous and choked.

“I’ve got you, Anton,” John said, not pausing in his rapid actions to clean the wound and get a dressing on. The bone had been nicked, too. “I can’t guarantee you’ll dance at the wedding, but you’ll get there.”

Anton’s answering laugh was on the verge of hysteria. “Claudia will kill me if I can’t dance with her.”

John administered a shot of morphine. “As if waltzing wasn’t bad enough, eh?”

Anton laughed again, but weakly, tears spilling unchecked down the sides of his face.

Ollie, a half dozen yards away, turned towards him as John finished doing what he could for Anton. “John, I thought that was you,” he shouted over the noise, “What the fuck are you doing out here? Did you get bored just shooting at the ranges?”

“Yeah,” John ducked again as the insurgents let loose another volley, “Thought I’d find out what it was like from the target’s perspective.”

“Daft bastard,” Ollie shouted back, “Got a gun?”

“Handgun,” John replied – it was standard issue for self defence, even for medical staff, “But I’m meant to be here patching you lot up, in and out, easy peasy.”

“Sorry. Went a bit pear-shaped. The Major’s going to be pissed off. The intel said we were good for this stretch of road.”

More machine gun fire. Everyone ducked. John shielded Anton from the kick of dust, but looked up to see Ollie, poised in a crouch, signalling to the men beside him – getting ready to move. Ollie then gestured at him too, palm out, hand moving down – _keep your head down, stay where you are_.

And as they rose to lay down more defensive fire, a mortar smashed down in the ground in front of the WMIKs, sending dirt and stone shrapnel every which way.

John flung himself over Anton, who moaned but was otherwise unaware behind the haze of morphine. John felt a sting and burn on the back of his neck, scored by hot sand and gravel, but it lasted only a second. He could hardly feel a thing, so flushed with adrenalin was he.

Then he dared look up.

The men of the Fifth had taken cover again, dragging their Lieutenant down with them.

John took a firm hold of his kit and ran, keeping low and refusing to flinch at the clatter of gunfire that followed his flight, until he reached Ollie's side.

“Fuck me,” said Ollie, “That didn’t go well.”

“Could have been worse,” said John, landing on his knees beside his friend.

“Their timing sucks. Why the fuck are the pricks starting to get the range _now_?”

“You're too pretty a target to pass up,” John said, as he checked Ollie for wounds. Ollie’s protective gear was pitted but unbreached. That wasn’t the problem. Ollie’s face was red, like it had been badly sunburnt, and his irises were pinpricks, "Where are all our mortars, anyway? We should be returning the favour."

“What we had left was in the end Warrior that went kaboom,” said Ollie, starting to blink madly, “What the fuck’s going on? I can’t see a goddamned thing.”

“Stop blinking, Ollie,” John said, fishing in the pack, “And don’t roll your eyes.”

“John?” Ollie sounded uncertain, now.

“Hang in there, Ollie.” John ripped open containers and got one of the others to help him loosen Ollie’s helmet, “Keep still. I’m going to wash your eyes out and put on a dressing. Chances are you’ll be good as new in a few days. We get this sort of injury pretty often, you know. Bit of a flash injury, that’s all, and some grit in there as well. Pain in the bollocks for a little while, and you’ll find this means I win the table tennis tournament by default.”

“Hell you do, you bastard,” said Ollie, the shake in his voice firming up. And then, more desperately, “You’re not lying to me?”

“I’m not lying to you Ollie. We both know I can’t lie for shit. We won’t know for sure until we get you back to base, but your chances are good.”

“If we can get the hell out of this mess.”

“Cavalry’s on the way, yeah?”

“Yes, assuming we live long enough for them to get here.”

“We will. Who’s in charge now?”

There was a strained silence.

“Captain Scofield went back with the chopper,” said Ollie matter-of-factly, “And Lieutenant Asher got killed in the last car when the mortars went up. And I can’t see, so…” Ollie grimaced, then he grinned ruefully, through the soot and burned skin, “I think the ranking able-bodied officer’d be you, Doc.”

John closed his eyes. Someone down the line swore vehemently. John could hardly blame them, and Ollie didn’t exactly speak up in his defence. Well, what did a GP know about combat? A couple of years as a Reservist didn’t exactly cut the mustard in this situation.

They heard the mortar coming this time, and everyone huddled for cover. The mortar fell short and exploded, sending dirt and rock flying.

They were going to die out here before help came. They were going to be shot to pieces by those arseholes up the hill.

 _Well_ , thought John, _fuck that shit. Fuck it fifty ways sideways with a motherfucking, cock-bollocksing, monkey-arsed bargepole. I have a duty to my patients and to these men and I am fucking well getting us out if this alive even if it fucking kills me._

He grinned like a blade at that last thought and opened his eyes – they were bright and hard and determined. He had every intention of living long enough to regret this.

“You,” he pointed at a man on the far right, “Keep an eye on my patients. You,” he pointed at the man to his left, “What’s the ammo situation?”

“Getting low,” the man said, “Everything we have left is still in the WMIK.”

“We’d better get it then. I don’t fancy our chances of knocking ‘em out with a couple of well-thrown rocks, do you?”

The soldier quirked an uncertain grin. “No, sir.”

“No…” John glanced at the name stitched onto the soldier’s jacket, “Private Wentworth. Come on, then.” He began to move off as the other two laid down covering fire.

Wentworth hesitated.

John scowled. “That’s an order Private Wentworth,” and he began to crawl away. He didn’t look back. Either these men would obey him or they wouldn’t. Having a hissy fit about it would do more harm than good.

Under the unrelenting gunfire – and the explosion of the occasional mortar – John crawled up to the two trapped WMIKs, and Wentworth crawled up beside him.

“Ammunition in that one, sir,” said the private, indicating the vehicle that was jammed up against one of the twisted Warrior wrecks. Its rear tyres were mangled. It was slightly ahead of the other vehicles and a very open and much-pitted target. Not much good to them, then. Any attempt to fetch the ammunition would be suicide.

“What’s in the other?” The second WMIK was trapped between the leading Warrior and the WMIK with the blown tyres. There was no room to reverse the vehicle. All it could do was sit in the line of fire – or move further forward into it.

“We had a couple of spare cans of petrol in that one.”

“What about the guns?”

“Jammed. We had to clear out before we could fix it.”

John peered at the mounted gun on the back of the vehicle and considered their options. The WMIK looked operational, but someone would have to jump in, under fire, to get it out of its trapped and useless position. That action wasn't much use either, unless the gun could be cleared for firing – and it would absolutely need to be firing for the bugfuck crazy, lame-Hollywood idea he'd just had.

"Think you can get that weapon back in action, Wentworth?"

"A doddle, sir, if I can get a minute at it."

"We might not get a whole minute," noted John wryly.

Wentworth quirked a half smile at him. "I've always wanted a chance to beat the company record, sir."

John took a breath and ran through the plan, such as it was, again. He was a medic. He wasn't supposed to be participating in combat, except in self defence and defence of his patients.

Well, he wasn’t meant to be out here getting shot at and in charge of a bunch of infantry soldiers pinned down by the enemy, either. _Needs must, and all that. Get out alive; deal with the consequences later_.

He and Wentworth heard the mortar coming over the stuttering roar of the bullets and ducked. This one did not fall short, but went behind the line, way behind, but it kicked up more sprays of stone and rock. Someone down the line yelled in pain. John wriggled back to see someone crouched over Murray's head, another two covering Ollie and Anton, and, closer, a man pressing fingers to his own torn face.

 _Fuck it._ This had to be within the definition of the Geneva Convention. He might even live to argue the point.

Time to act.

John grinned wolfishly and, from Wentworth’s reaction, probably a bit madly indeed, but he ignored the private’s response in favour of wriggling up closer to the vehicles. “We're going to take out the mortar and guns in the hollow," he asserted, "And then we're taking out the second gun position." He omitted the phrase _assuming we_ _’re not dead_. He outlined his idea briefly and he could see Wentworth wondering just how nuts he was. Then Wentworth grinned.

Which probably only meant that Wentworth was as nuts as he was. _Madness loves company, right?_ Not precisely the saying, but it would do.

"I'll drive,” said John, “You take shotgun. And give me your belt.” He was already taking off his own, “And a lighter, if you have one.”

Wentworth fished the lighter out of a pocket and gave it to John, who dropped it in the top pocket of his jacket. Next moment, Johnwas twisting around and using his scissors to cut the legs off his khaki trousers while keeping out of the line of fire.

“If they mortar this car, we’re fried. Sir.”

“Yep. So you better move fast.” Though the idea was that, now the enemy had got the range for the line, the bastards, they’d have to recalculate to aim at the vehicle, once it was moving. That left the guns, of course, but one thing at a time. John cut the square of khaki into strips and tied them together, making a rough rope.

Wentworth moved fast and handed the Second Lieutenant his belt, then turning to give a succinct version of the plan over his radio to a lance corporal down the line..

“Air support’s coming,” Wentworth reported back, “But they’ve got an anti-aircraft gun to get around first. These bastards are better coordinated than we thought.”

John nodded. They could wait for the support to arrive, but with the mortar fire now coming down right on top of them, they didn’t really have the time to spare.

At the end of the line, a mortar shell exploded on the road as the men there hurried along the ditch, dragging Murray with them.

They were out of time.

With the two belts and the makeshift rope in his hands, John crouched. He took a deep, steadying breath. He patted his pocket. He had the lighter.

He counted off with his fingers.

 _Three_. He could smell blood and cordite and dust and burnt metal. And his hands were rock steady.

 _Two._ The weight of his handgun pressed against hip. It was of no use at the moment, but it was reassuring to have it there all the same.

_One._

He and Wentworth rose and ran, crouched over, while the remaining able-bodied soldiers of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers concentrated their fire on that deadly hollow up the hill.

John leapt into the driver’s seat and crouched to attach the belts to each side of the steering wheel, ready for later. He tore the caps off the two petrol cans and stuffed most of the khaki rope into the opening of one of them, leaving only the tail end of it free.

While he worked on this, Wentworth bent to the gun and worked on the breach. He cleared the jam in under a minute and fed in fresh ammunition.

“Ready!” Wentworth yelled.

John fired up the ignition and threw the vehicle into first gear to force the WMIK out of its cramped space and up the hill. In the back, petrol sloshed from the can.

As John put the vehicle into second gear, Wentworth began firing up the hill. The enemy fired back of course. The two men tried to work while making their bodies as small a target as possible. The Fifth had to spread their gunfire now – wouldn’t do to accidently shoot their improbable commanding officer and his sidekick in the back. Mostly they were keeping the insurgents bedded in under the rocky outcrop from contributing too much to the crossfire.

A mortar flew over the vehicle, now in third gear, to land between them and the line behind. At least they’d given the Fifth that much respite, as the enemy recalculated the range.

Wentworth emptied his gun at the enemy position, reloaded, emptied another, then dropped down beside John in the front seat of the car. He scrabbled on the floor to tie the belts off – one around the accelerator, winding it hard and pulling it tight to keep it to the floor as John moved his foot but kept the landrover aimed at its target; the other to the door handle. The tension between the two belts kept the vehicle moving in a straight line – straight towards the hollow, only thirty or so yards away now.

Another mortar exploded to the left of them. _Fuckity hairy arsing shitballs. Those bastards are getting better at adjusting their range. This had better work._

“ _Go, go, go!”_ John bellowed, over the sound of bullets pinging off the hood and front grill. The windscreen had shattered. John had no idea if either of them had been hit yet. The adrenalin was singing in his veins and he couldn’t feel anything except the pounding of his heart under his skin.

Wentworth flung himself to the passenger side of the vehicle, threw open the door, looked at the dirt zooming past him and rather than hesitate, jumped and rolled.

John took the lighter from his pocket and lit the petrol-soaked end of the fuse he’d fashioned from his trousers. He stayed long enough to make sure it had taken, and lurched across to the passenger door – the driver’s side was anchored shut by a belt after all.

It was a hell of a thing, with the vehicle bouncing as it hit rocks, tussocks and small dips. John thought he might get thrown out before he could jump.

Bullets pinged, louder, and he felt a sudden burning sensation in his bare leg, but that was all. He crouched, pushed out, and hit the ground rolling, jarring his shoulder painfully. Without looking at the vehicle, he crawled across the dirt, heading downhill, until hands grabbed him by the vest and dragged him behind the pitiful shelter of a rock protruding from the earth.

He and Wentworth peered up to see the WKIM crash through the bushes. The petrol fumes from the cans in the back were already burning.

A man in desert gear and a headscarf rose and fired into the vehicle. The bullets tore into empty seats, and then into one of the petrol cans.

Which burst into a fireball.

The man who’d fired at the vehicle fell back, screaming, as the flames engulfed him, and then was silent.

From the hollow burst four more men, three of them firing and yelling as they ran down the hill towards them.

John scrabbled to free his handgun.

Wentworth raised his SA80 and cut one of them down. A second. Bullets spat up the dirt around them and a chip of rock pierced Wentworth’s forehead, sending blood into his eyes.

John got the third man in his sights, but he fell before John had to pull the trigger, cut down by gunfire from someone in the Fifth behind them.

The fourth man was on fire.

He ran in pointless, horrible circles, beating at his clothes and hair.

He was screaming, blood-curdling shrieks of terror and pain.

John stared. He shuddered.

_Jesus. I did that. I did that to him. I did that._

The man stumbled to his knees, still screaming and beating at his hair. His flaming halo of hair…

 _He_ _’ll never survive. Even if we can get him to the camp. Even if… Fuck. Oh fuck. Maybe I… Maybe. No. No. No._

The man fell and squirmed, shrieking, in the dirt. Such awful cries.

 _Better, maybe, to put him out of his misery. He can_ _’t survive that, surely. Oh, Christ._

John began to raise his weapon, and his aim was steady, dead on the poor bastard’s skull, but he couldn’t pull the trigger.

_This would be a mercy._

Mercy killing, maybe, but that wasn’t what he was, or who he was. What he’d just done, that was battle, that was combat, that he could live with, but this thing he was thinking of doing? Was that… right? Was that a _right_ thing to do?

A shot rang out, and the screaming stopped.

John blinked at the dead man. That shot had not been from his gun. Beside him, Wentworth was wiping the blood from his eyes. Not him, either.

Who…?

A man sheltering at the rocky outcrop lowered his rifle and glared poisonously across the landscape at him. The man shifted his aim slightly and John, alarmed, pulled back.

A shot rang out, pinging into the stone beside his head, and John ducked further, trying to make himself a tiny, tiny target.

“Little fuckers,” Wentworth said, scowling. He raised his rifle again and fired a steady stream of bullets at the rocky overhang, showering the men underneath with stony shrapnel and ricochets.

At least, until he ran out of bullets.

Down the hill, the Fifth began to move, rising up, firing into the final enemy position.

 _My leg stings like a bastard,_ thought John, but dismissed the thought in favour of checking on Wentworth.

“You okay?” he yelled. Wentworth was curled up beside him, out of ammo and still terribly exposed.

“Never better, sir,” Wentworth shouted back, even though they were right next to each other. The world was a roaring tempest still, their ears ringing with it, “I’m thinking of taking my holidays here every year.”

John laughed and the twisted to see what was happening in the second position.

To see that enraged man from before rise a little from his cover, aiming at them, maybe thinking that if he had to go, he was going to take John and Wentworth out with him.

 _Well_ , John thought, _he can fucking try, but I_ _’m not just going to sit here and be a fucking practice target._

John made himself sit, one leg crooked underneath him (his other leg seemed not to want to work), raised his handgun and took aim like he had all the time in the world. He could only see the man’s shoulders, his hands on the rifle. His head, poking above the hillside and the rocks. His high forehead above the sights of the gun. Sweat gleaming on the skin. Shining in the sunlight. Like a beacon.

John heard bullets whining up the hillside, taking out the man who had risen up beside the one now targeting him and Wentworth. John watched that man fall in slow motion, while the one in his sights just grinned and his finger moved ever so slowly on the trigger.

John exhaled, hand steady, eye steady, heart thumping but steady.

Still in slow motion, like a ballet, two more men rose from the cover of the rocks and sprayed those coming up the hill with bullets, only to spin aside, dust and blood pluming into the air from their clothes and bodies.

John squeezed the trigger.

The insurgent’s head snapped back, blood and bone and brain blooming out behind him like some terrible flower.

And the world was suddenly silent, apart from the hum in John’s ears that reminded him of a post-gig buzz, the tinnitus part of the aftermath of showing the world that he was still alive, that he wasn’t dead yet, that he was still fighting.

 _Fuck, yes_. He was still fighting. He’d always be fighting.

“Hey. Hey, Doc.”

John became aware of the private talking next to him.

“It’s done sir.”

“Yes,” said John, blinking. He lowered his arm slowly. Holstered the weapon. “Yes. Is everyone all right?”

“A couple of flesh wounds, sir, but they’re all right.”

“I should see to them,” said John, and tried to stand, but that damned leg still wasn’t working properly.

“Chopper’s on its way for the injured,” said someone, not Wentworth, who came up next to them, “We’re getting first aid done down there. Let me see to you, sir.”

“Me? But I…” John frowned, puzzled, as Wentworth and the new man turned him to treat his leg. “I didn’t…”

“A through and through to your calf, sir,” said Wentworth cheerfully, “Not bad for what we just did.”

John blinked at him, feeling suddenly weak all over. “Your head…”

“Just a scratch, sir,” Wentworth grinned, “It’ll hardly even scar, I reckon.”

John peered. So it was. Bloody but not life threatening. “Wonderful. You can keep your boyish good looks.”

“My girl will be relieved,” said Wentworth, helping to bind John’s leg, “She says she only agreed to marry me ‘cos I’m pretty.”

“No accounting for taste,” said John, and they laughed.

And then Wentworth saluted him sharply and John returned the gesture, before the medivac team returned to take them back to base.

John’s leg healed cleanly and with only the smallest of scars (though later the short-term limp, the memory of the pain and of other, worse memories, came back to haunt him, with interest). Of all the wounded John had treated that day, the burned Lance Corporal died, but the others made it. Even O’Hanlon’s mate the medic.

Second Lieutenant John Watson of the RAMC was awarded the Military Cross for his actions that day – ‘in recognition of exemplary gallantry during active operations against the enemy on land’. Private Harry Wentworth was presented with the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross.

John Watson knew he’d not only treated but _protected_ his patients; he’d done the right thing by the men who had looked to him for command. He felt that for the first time since he’d joined that he’d been _fully_ useful, using both his medical and soldierly skills, as well as his instincts.

John thought a lot about what had happened and, once his tour was over, came to the decisionthat he’d made a mistake in his choice of service when he signed up. And that maybe it wasn’t too late to fix that.

He spoke to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers’ Major Ferguson, who had recommended him for the medal, to request his support for a transfer to the infantry.

It wasn’t the usual kind of request. All kinds of people were deeply unhappy with him about it, not least Captain Amos. The army had spent a lot of money on his study and training so far. The front line wasn’t the best or most sensible place for a valuable surgeon-in-training to be.

 _I have other skills_ , John insisted _. I have other value. I think I can do more in the infantry, in a specialist unit like the Fusiliers._

In the end, with Major Ferguson not only supporting but championing the request – actively wanting him, in fact, for the Fifth – and the backing of those who trained him in the reserves and the men he’d saved that day, John Watson got his transfer from the RAMC to the infantry and the front line.


	5. Still inside the Deepest Pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John, Sherlock and Bill Murray visit Robert Ferguson to unearth the case details. There they find a grieving wife, a little boy who thinks all soldiers are scarred, and a man in hiding from his own waking nightmares and the terror that he could hurt his family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this chapter comes from the Alex Lloyd song, Lucky Star.

Sherlock pulled the hire car up outside the country cottage and sat for a moment, assessing the little home, or rather, the people who lived in it.

_Ex-soldier on disability pension (well, he knew that, no deduction required). Enjoys gardening – herbs set up on a trestle table in orderly rows, various planters at waist height, cushioned bench seat - designed for someone who can’t sit on the ground, has limited mobility. Plants recently neglected to a degree. Watered inadequately after months... no, **years** , of care. Sudden break to routine preventing him from going outside. _

_The other adult in the house: a keen gardener with specialist interests – hothouse, solar panels and heating unit, strong scent of earthy decay. South American plants especially, some with exotic uses if properly (or perhaps_ improperly _) prepared. Narcotics, hallucinogens. Poisons. Plants still apparently well tended. She still gets outside, then.  
_

_A small child: toys left in the vegetable garden, scribbled drawings taped to the window of the… living room. Colourful, childish decals on one window. The latched gate, which used to be left open – look at the wear patterns – now secured with that shiny new mechanism against the inquisitiveness of a wandering child._

Sherlock remembered gates like that, and how ineffective they’d been.

And of course Sherlock knew a little about Robert Ferguson, even if he’d never really paid that much attention to the man’s family. He pretty much forgot anything John had ever said about them almost as soon as he’d said it. Ferguson, Murray, John and some others had caught up at least once a year most years, since John had first moved to Baker Street, at some army reunion function. Survivors’ Club, John had called it. John hadn’t gone this year. Clashed with a case.

Now, Sherlock brought to mind everything John had ever said (or very patently _not_ said) about his former commander. Rapidly, he tallied this up with the facts they had gleaned from Bill at Baker Street and on the drive here. This garden view was simply… window dressing.

Major Robert Ferguson had been badly burned in the same action in Afghanistan that had maimed Bill and given them both medical discharges and John a second medal, in the tour before the one in which John himself had been shot. Years of therapy, both physical and mental, had followed for the Major. Four years ago, he had married his physical therapist, Milena Arpasi, Peruvian by birth, but a naturalised British citizen. Three years ago, their son, Arthur, was born. The Major’s PTSD at that time was being successfully managed. He loved his son and his wife, though sometimes black moods gripped him for days on end. Life was challenging but not impossible. They were, within their challenges, a happy family.

Then two months ago, things went bad. Robert Ferguson began to experience random episodes of delirium. Hallucinations. He assaulted his wife, attempted to choke her, believing her to be an assassin. His tearful little son had tugged on his sleeves to make him stop, and Ferguson had come out of the waking nightmare to realise what he was doing. That his grip was no longer strong was for the first time a blessing.

A month ago, it had happened again, except this time Milena had hit him, hard, with a kitchen chair, toppling him to the floor and splitting his head open. Arthur had screamed, shocking Robert out of his blind attack. Milena had grabbed Arthur and fled, going straight to the old family friend Bill Murray. _Robbie doesn’t know what he’s doing,_ she’d said. _I don’t want him to be locked up. We have to help him. Please_.

A week ago, it had happened again. Bill was there this time, keeping an eye out at Robert’s request as well as Milena’s. Ferguson had launched at him with a breadknife, clearly mistaking Bill for their old enemy. Bill fended him off with his crutch, took a stab to the aluminium leg and something worse was only avoided because Arthur began to scream and cry, and Ferguson snapped right out of it.

Since that incident, Ferguson had shut himself up in the rear of their modest country cottage and refused to come out. Sometimes he ranted and cried and shrieked. Sometimes Milena could only hear ragged sobbing. Nothing she could say would induce him to leave the room.

And so here they were, he and John, to investigate what was probably not even a one. PTSD. Sudden collapse. Cue hospitalisation followed by institutionalisation. Predictable and tedious.

But there was something in it that grated up Sherlock’s spine like fingernails on a blackboard.

John tapped on the driver’s side window, bringing Sherlock back to the now. “Come on. Bill’s ready.”

Sherlock hadn’t been specifically waiting for Bill to get out of the car. He glanced across to where Bill was balanced with his crutches in one hand as he unlatched the gate. It was a little awkward, but Bill was nimble enough. He’d done this often, in the time both before and after the Fergusons had begun to latch it for the safety of their child.

Sherlock stepped out of the car and he and John joined Bill in the short walk to the door.

The door opened before they reached it to knock, revealing a woman – olive complexion, dark hair, strong nose, full lips. Striking looks, or they would be had she not obviously been crying over the course of many days. Lost sleep, too. Concern was eating at the edges of her health.

The little boy in her arms was less affected, though clearly fractious. He brightened on seeing Bill Murray though.

“Billy!” The boy flung his arms wide, nearly hitting his mother in the face, but she only smiled at her son’s joyful response to her visitor. Bill thrust his face towards the child, blowing a raspberry that made the boy giggle and then wrap his arms around Bill’s whole head in a hug. Bill’s raspberry disappeared against the boy’s chest.

“Silly Billy!” the boy crowed.

“Smarty Arty!” Bill crowed back and then made exaggerated bitey gestures at the boy’s fingers. Arty drew the digits quickly out of the way and then patted Bill on the top of his head.

It was clearly a ritual greeting. It reminded Sherlock of Violet and Ford in their younger years.

“Bill, it’s so good to see you.” The woman’s relief was evident.

“It’s going to be okay, Milena. I brought them, see?”

Milena Ferguson stared, wide-eyed, at Sherlock and then John. “You are John Watson, yes?”

John smiled and nodded. “At your service, ma’am.”

“And your friend, Sherlock Holmes?” She cut a quick glance to Sherlock and then back to John. “You can help Robbie?”

“We’ll do whatever we can for Rob, Mrs Ferguson,” said John.

“Milena, please,” she said, and put her son on the ground. “Arthur, go and play. Mummy has to talk.”

Arthur looked up at Bill, then John, then Sherlock. “You look funny,” he said.

“Arthur, don’t be rude,” said his mother, with an anxious glance at Sherlock.

Sherlock blinked at the boy. “I am funny,” he said earnestly.

Arty considered this. “Daddy has scars and Silly Billy has scars but you don’t have any scars.” He narrowed his eyes and looked suspiciously at John too. “Soldiers have _scars_.”

Mrs Ferguson appeared deeply embarrassed as well as sharply distressed. John’s expression, Sherlock thought, was at least twenty seven different things, but embarrassment was none of them.

“A lot do, yes,” said John.

Arty thought on this. “Daddy says some of his scars are in his head and not just on it.”

“Yes,” said John, “That happens, too.”

“He’s hiding so I can’t see the inside ones getting out.”

“I’m sorry about that,” said John, “Sherlock and I have come to see if we can help.”

Arty blinked solemnly at him and at Sherlock. “I wish you could,” he said, “I miss him.”

Tears welled up in Mrs Ferguson’s eyes.

“Do you want to listen to the grown-ups talk,” asked Sherlock, “Or play?”

“Can I play _and_ listen?”

“Of course,” said Sherlock breezily, aborting Milena Ferguson’s protest. He strode into the house ahead of everybody and dropped into a chair at the kitchen table. Arty, who had trotted along at his side, showed Sherlock his collection of plastic zoo animals, which Sherlock briefly admired. Satisfied, Arty squatted among his toys to play.

Milena followed Sherlock to the table, her expression uncertain, but she gestured John to a seat and pulled one out for Bill as well. Bill, Sherlock noted, was looking speculatively at John – _wondering what John thinks of my behaviour_ – but John simply pulled out a notebook already half filled with jotted marks.

“Bill’s told us what he knows,” said John, “But we’d like the whole thing from your perspective.”

Milena didn’t speak for a moment, and when she did, it was not about the case. “Do you know what Robbie says about you, Dr Watson?”

John said nothing, but he held her gaze.

“He says you’re the best rule that he ever bent in the army. He says pulling in all those favours to get you into the Fifth Northumberland was worth it. I know you saved his life, and Bill’s, and so I will believe him. He trusts you, Doctor, and therefore I will trust you. Can I trust your friend?” She would not look at Sherlock.

John didn’t either, but Sherlock knew that was because John’s faith was absolute.

“If there’s a puzzle to be solved, Sherlock will solve it. If there’s any way to help Rob, we’ll do whatever we can to see he gets that help. If there’s nothing we can do, we’ll tell you straight.”

“I can’t afford…” Milena began.

Sherlock made a ‘pfft’ noise and waved a hand. “This case is pro bono, whatever we discover. Stop procrastinating. _What’s happening to your husband_?”

Milena stared at him, eyes brimming, mouth tight, nostrils flared. “He is going mad, Mr Holmes.”

Sherlock shook his head. “If you thought that, you’d have a psychiatrist here, not a consulting detective. Try again.”

“Your bedside manner’s a bit rubbish,” muttered Bill.

“John’s the one with a bedside manner. I’m here to get at the truth,” Sherlock snipped. To his surprise, Bill only grinned sheepishly at him.

“John’s bedside manner is pretty rubbish too,” he confessed, and John’s mouth quirked in a hastily suppressed smile.

“Sherlock’s right, Milena,” said John, gently, because his bedside manner wasn’t as bad as all that, “What’s strange about what’s happening, that Bill thought to get us and not a clinical specialist?”

Milena’s brows drew together in anxious furrows. “It makes no sense to me. It’s so sudden,” she said, “And he was doing so well. A year ago, his psychiatrist thought Robbie could cut back on the visits. Dr Polash said that we had a… a bright future. Even with Robbie’s physical disabilities, we had so much to look forward to. But Dr Polash retired and now the dreams have come back. Robbie has started to hallucinate. He’s so afraid of hurting me and Arty, he’s locked himself in the back of the house and he won’t come out. I have to drive away from the house so he can use the toilet. He makes me leave food by the door and he only fetches it in once I’ve gone. He eats with his fingers, he’s so afraid of what he could do with a knife and fork. With _cutlery_. How did it change so fast? How did…?” Milena pressed her fingers to her mouth, trying to stopper up the words.

“Mummy?” Arty had left his game with the plastic zoo animals and toy trucks and now leaned against her leg.

“Sorry baby. Sorry. Sorry.” She pressed her hands over her face, trying to hide her despair from her son.

“Don’t be scared, Mummy,” said Arty, “Daddy will look after you. And the funny man will look after you. See?” He pressed a toy giraffe into her lap, as though that was who he meant.

A warm hand pressed over the fingers that she had pressed into her eyes, and she moved to see a pair of unusual grey-blue eyes gazing steadily at her.

“When did the dreams get worse again?”

“Six months ago,” she said. She bent to pick Arty up and the boy curled up in her lap, looking at her anxiously. She rocked him unconsciously, as much for her own comfort, Sherlock could see, as for Arty’s.

“Did anything significant happen around then? Not necessarily to do with the family. Anything in the news? Something local?”

“Nothing. We looked for triggers, we talked about it. There was nothing.”

“That’s not unusual,” said John carefully, “Triggers can be very subtle. They’re not always clear even to the person with PTSD.”

“We know,” said Milena, “We thought it might just be a new… phase. A part of the cycle. Dr Miliotis thought it might be that and prescribed sleeping tablets.”

“That’s the psychiatrist who replaced Dr Polash?”

“Yes. She’s very good. She came very highly recommended. Robbie had been seeing her for three months when the dreams began again, but very bad. Worse than he’s had since the early days, he says.”

“And then he became violent.”

Arty flinched in his mother’s arms and whimpered a little.

“Ssh, baby,” said Milena, rocking him and kissing his hair, “It’s all right. Everything’s all right. Daddy didn’t mean to hurt Mummy. He was having a bad dream, that’s all.”

“He thought you were a bogeyman,” said Arty in a breaking voice.

“But then he woke up and he knew it was us,” Milena said, hugging him close, “Daddy would never mean to hurt us.”

Bill leaned forward in his chair, laying his denuded hand against Arty’s shoulder. “Your daddy is a good man,” he said firmly, “A great man, and John and his funny friend are going to help him.”

Sherlock ignored Bill’s expression, which was half pleading, half defiant. Instead, he pushed back from the table.

“Back in a moment. Arty, look after your mother. Sing her a song. Do you know the one about the zoo animals?” He bent down and sang, choosing one that had been a favourite of Violet and Ford’s. “ _Let’s go to the zoo, let’s stomp like elephants do..._ ” He even stomped emphatically, which made Arty give him a strange look, then giggle. “And what comes next?”

“ _Jump like the kangaroos do_!”

“Good man, Arty. Get the toys and teach your mother. John.”

John smiled reassuringly at Milena as Arty took up handfuls of toys and showed her each one as he did the actions to suit the words. He was _swinging like monkeys do_ and getting Bill to clap as Sherlock and John went down the hall to the very back of the house.

They exchanged a glance as they walked down the carpet. “Do you think…?” John began. “I mean, it’s just like…”

“It is, and I do. How it’s being done, or why, I don’t know. Let’s find out.”

John knocked on the door. “Major Ferguson? It’s me, John Watson.”

They could hear movement behind the door and kept still and silent as the shuffling sounds moved closer and closer to the door.

Finally it opened a crack, and Sherlock got a glimpse of a weary face half ruined by burn scars, belonging to a stiffly moving man in full military dress uniform, one eye milky the other bright brown and startled to see a stranger at his door – which was slammed in their faces.

“Christ, Watson, what do you think you’re doing here? With… _him_ ” Ferguson’s voice barked out, rough

“Bill told me what’s been happening. I’ve brought help.”

“No-one can help me.” Ferguson’s voice cracked.

“Not if that’s your attitude,” said Sherlock crisply, “And it’s all very well to dress up in your noble finery from your glory days and try to build up the nerve to kill yourself, but frankly that’s a waste of John’s efforts to save your life in the first place.”

“Sherlock,” hissed John.

Sherlock, unrepentant, rattled the door handle. “You and I know something, Major Ferguson,” he said, and rattled the door again.

“What’s that?” snarled the major.

“That when John Watson saves your life, it means your life is worth saving. And if it didn’t before, you’ll damn well make sure it does after the fact.”

John stared at Sherlock, who rolled his eyes at him, as though the statement was an obvious one and not worthy of comment.

“There’s also the fact,” said Sherlock into the silence behind the door, “That killing yourself won’t help your wife and son at all; imagine what it would do to them, to lose you in so horrible a fashion.”

“At least they’d be safe from me.”

“You could achieve that by leaving. Having yourself committed.”

“Sherlock, Jesus.” John glared at him, but Sherlock shushed him.

Behind the door, there was a sob, and then a sharp intake of breath.

“No,” came Robert Ferguson’s strained voice, the effort it took for him to keep control very obvious, “Have you seen those places?”

“Yes,” said Sherlock briskly, “And I’ve been dead before, and between you and me, neither is much of an option. Let’s look at a third outcome, shall we?”

Slowly, the door opened again, just a sliver, and then further, and then fully. Ferguson was holding himself very erect. Proudly, even, although his eyes were red-rimmed and haunted.

“That’s better,” said Sherlock, “That’s the Robert Ferguson John has told me about.”

The side of Ferguson’s face that wasn’t stiff with scar tissue tilted in a rueful smile. “Sorry about that, John. It’s been a bastard of time. I’m not… not myself, lately.”

“So I hear. Can we come in?”

Ferguson limped aside, giving them room. Sherlock strode into the room – which turned out to be Ferguson’s study – and John followed.

The room was stuffy, though neat, having been used as a bolthole for seven days. Ferguson had been sleeping in his office chair, when he’d been sleeping at all. A few bowls were piled up on the desk, and a half-consumed bottle of water. A thick notepad of lined paper was on the blotter, the used leaves curled back, showing that only a dozen blank pages were left.

Beside the notepad was a letter opener. Metal. The edge of it had been sharpened to a point, sometime in the last day, Sherlock calculated from the wear on the stone paperweight Ferguson had been using for the deed.

Sherlock picked up the letter opener and handed it to John.

“I don’t think you’ll be needing that.”

“You think there’s a third option?” Ferguson prompted as he closed the door again.

“I intend to stay until I’ve found it,” Sherlock said.

“And what if I am just going crazy?” Ferguson’s voice faltered, and he swallowed. He looked to John. “I appreciate you coming, but I don’t know what you can do. It’s… you know what they’re like, the dreams.”

“I know,” said John.

“And they are so much worse than they used to be. I never knew dreams could feel so real. They don’t feel like dreams at all.” Ferguson looked down at his hands – one curled into a fist with stress, one fused into an atrophied claw because of the damage inflicted almost 17 years ago. “They’re not nightmares, they’re flashbacks. When I’m awake. And it’s reliving every moment. I can feel the Warrior going over. I can feel the explosion in my bones. I can feel… feel it burning. My… I…” He looked up. “I can smell it, John. Nobody should have to remember every sensation of their own body on fire.”

John stepped up to his former commanding officer and laid a comforting hand on his good shoulder. “No. Nobody should have to live it the first time, let alone relive it.”

“It’s only by God’s grace I’ve snapped out of it before I hurt Arty too.” Ferguson lifted a hand to hide his weeping eyes. “My god, what I’ve done to Milena.”

“You’ve done no permanent damage to your wife,” said Sherlock dismissively, earning himself an irritated glare from John, “She appears to be still very much in love with you and gives every indication of being concerned for your wellbeing.”

“Of course she is,” Ferguson snapped, “Her husband’s going insane and keeps trying to kill her.”

“You’re not going insane,” said Sherlock, stalking around the room, picking up and putting down objects. He snatched up the notebook and skim read a few pages, then flipped to the start and began again. “Tell him, John.”

John blinked, and then looked Ferguson square in the eye.

“You’re not describing any symptoms that are consistent with escalated PTSD episodes – not after so many years. It’s too sudden, and too extreme a departure from the patterns you’d already established. And I know I’m not a psychiatrist, but I can’t see any signs of other mental health disorders either – from your behaviour or from Bill’s or your wife’s descriptions. But I am as certain as I can be that PTSD isn’t the problem, and you’re not going mad.”

“You sound very confident,” said Ferguson. His tone was neutral but Sherlock could hear the hope thrumming under it.

“I am. We have another working hypothesis.”

Sherlock whirled around from where he had been rifling through the drawers of Ferguson’s desk. He slapped down a packet of prescription pills and a tube of what looked like Ventolin.

“Are these yours?”

“Yes. They’re my… my anxiety medication. And the puffer. My lungs were… sometimes I need help with my breathing.”

“Mm.” Sherlock popped a pill and sniffed it. Licked it.

“ _Jesus,_ Sherlock, don’t…”

Sherlock took pity on John’s edginess and placed the pill back on the table.

“Major Ferguson,” said Sherlock, “We think you’ve been poisoned.”

Ferguson froze. “Poisoned?”

“Yes,” said John, “With something similar to a substance we’ve seen used before.”

“But…”

“I know PTSD can manifest in lots of different ways, and for lots of different reasons,” said John. _Like an unnecessary limp. Or an aversion to sunny summer days._ “But this one’s chemical, and we need to know why someone is targeting you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Sherlock sings with Arty is Let’s Go to the Zoo: http://youtu.be/OwRmivbNgQk


	6. Feels so Cold on a Sunny Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John switched from the RAMC to the infantry. Now he's on his second infantry tour, his first in Afghanistan, and has just been promoted to Lieutenant. He's about to win the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross; and he's about to lose so much in exchange for fistfuls of nightmares at the same time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is from the Alex Lloyd song 'My Way Home'.
> 
> Once more, my very heartfelt thanks to Kizzia, who gave me knowledgable feedback on the errors in this chapter, along with ways to fix them.
> 
> The whole story is now written and will be posted more frequently from today.

“Hey there, Lieutenant Watson, my man,” greeted Bill as he walked into the Fifth’s barracks at Tidworth.

John, in the process of stamping into his boots, laughed. “Sergeant Murray, you wastrel, a little respect, here.” John mock-polished his new insignia.

He was pleased to finally have a second pip. For a while it seemed like he’d be a second lieutenant for life. Other doctors who joined the RAMC often went in at a higher rank, but because he’d been starting over to study surgery, second lieutenant it was. Then he’d decided to start over yet _again_. He’d completed the Platoon Commanders Battle Course with distinction, but his old rank.

The Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers had spent from late 2005 to May 2006 in Iraq as part of Operation Telic VII – John’s second tour, but his first in the infantry – and Major Ferguson had recommended him for this promotion on their return.

Rumour had it the Fifth was looking at Afghanistan for their next tour, later in the year, now that the team had been able to decompress and had a bit of time off at home.

Bill grinned at John’s only slightly-concealed pride at the promotion, and threw a sharp salute to his friend. John, all solemnity, saluted back, then grinned and returned to getting his boots on.

“How was leave, sir? One wild ride from Land’s End to John O’Groats, breaking hearts and sinking pints from sunrise to sunny sunrise like a man on a mission? Or spending great chunks of the month at medical symposiums like the manic swot you are?”

“I may have broken a heart in Bristol, but honestly, Bill, she seemed a bit relieved to be shot of me.”

In fact, Pamela had made it clear that John was, a) great fun in bed but not marrying material, b) too busy to make enough time for her anyway and c) commitment-phobic. John had agreed with a) and b) and was considering c) as not so much he was _phobic_ as simply focused on other goals.

“And the swotting?”

Well, that one was a fair call. John had a reputation for using his leave on keeping his medical knowledge and credentials up to date. Major Ferguson even allowed him paid time to attend relevant courses when the unit was at Tidworth. _I keep bending rules for you Watson_ , Ferguson had said, _make it worth my while._

“This leave, the medical conference was on the diagnosis and treatment of eye infections, so you’ll be thanking me for my manic swottiness next time the smoke haze and dust storms gum your baby browns shut overnight.” He wasn’t sure he should admit he’d gone to _two_ conferences, the other being the College of Emergency Medicine’s conference, including sessions on _Emergency and Pre Hospital Burn Care._ He’d seen enough burn injuries to want to have a better grip of first response care in the field.

“Hand on heart, Doc, and the other on my dented arsecheek, I appreciate your efforts. And Tom over there owes his life to that weekend you spent getting full bottle on genital warts.”

John threw a balled up pair of socks at Bill, while Tom Okenado, now a full corporal, pulled a face at him. The implication was clear that he’d have given Bill the finger if they were not all now in uniform.

And then everyone was on their feet and saluting as Captain Oliver Miller entered the room. There followed grinning, the slapping of backs and talk about the leave just gone, the work coming up and the rumour about Afghanistan.

“Plenty of work there for The Surgeon, hey Lieutenant,” said Dash to John warmly.

“Plenty for everyone,” John agreed mildly.

Dasharath Sastry had been with them for Telic VII, so John didn’t mind him using that nickname so much. Those within the Fifth knew it wasn’t a cold-blooded title. Other units might find the sharp-shooting infantryman doctor a bit odd, but the Fifth was proud of him.

His medical skills gave the specialist unit, already full of superb marksmen, an advantage. Within days of setting foot back in Iraq, John set about proving his usefulness to them. In a firefight, he was fast and deadly. He had a reputation for being fearless, but not reckless. His medical skills on the field were pretty bloody handy as well, and several of his mates were beneficiaries of his trauma care. Many others benefited from the detailed trauma aid briefings he gave them as well, with Major Ferguson’s blessing. The major knew how to make the most of any asset under his command.

So, yeah, John Watson _was_ an oddball, but he was _their_ oddball, and that nickname was born right after the first Iraqi skirmish he was engaged in. John thought the label a kind of badge of honour. Perhaps it emphasised the military over the medical, but he could hardly blame his unit for that. He was the one who chose to become a soldier. He tried not to think about it too much, how he still hadn’t quite found the balance. This life was enough, and that name was enough: the Surgeon didn’t waste bullets, and he didn’t waste lives. It said something about him, that name – about his skills, about his determination to spare life when he could, and only take it when he must. Well, the latter was a bit of a luxury at times, certainly. But he looked out for his mates. He protected his unit.

John sat at the edge of the group, now boosted by a dozen more men – including Grae, Hickey, Angus – and reflected on his small collection of army names. Watson. Doc. The Surgeon. Timon. That last one was Ollie, who John called Pumbaa in return as a running joke. Some bright spark decided that Bill Murray, younger than them both, was clearly Simba. Tom Okenado often broke into _Hakuna Matata_ whenever the three of them showed up in a room. Cheeky beggar.

Ah, and here he went now, accompanying the song with a perky little dance and shaking his khaki-clad arse at Bill, and they were laughing, and John laughed with them.

John wasn’t sure that the army was home, but it was the closest he’d had to one in a very long time, and if he didn’t love it unreservedly, he did still love it. Whatever his father and his sister thought.

(His father’s latest scathing letter had been vague but damning about what Jack thought. John honestly didn’t know why he still read the bloody things; the annual report that told him he was still failing to meet expectations. Harry he’d hardly heard from: one lunch together where he met Harry’s new girlfriend, Clara, who reminded John a little of his mother; and the drunken rant one night that started with a congratulations on the medal and ended with the howling warning that if he got himself shot next time, not to come crying to her. As if _that_ would ever happen.)

The months passed fairly routinely after that, just the usual army life. Some training up at Dartmoor, a mixed exercise with the Germans, a week working with the Americans training up a specialist peacekeeping unit from Kenya.

Then rumour became fact, and the Fifth Northumberland decamped to Helmand, Afghanistan.

People at home, John knew, didn’t really see much difference between the two theatres of war, or even in the reasons for being there. People thought Afghanistan was as full of deserts as the arid Iraq, never mind that there was a whole bloody country between the two. Aesthetically, John preferred the Afghani mountains to the Iraqi sand, but at least it was nominally easier to see what was coming at you in a desert.

Afghanistan was treacherous as a landscape. The circumstances of engagement were complicated too. He knew of entire Afghani families killed by the Taliban because someone in the family had worked with or accepted help from western troops.

John found that difficult – the price paid by Afghani civilians, even the children. Some of the things he saw haunted him. Some of the things he did, too, though they were all part of doing his job. Protecting his unit, protecting the civilians, surviving. He earned his nickname and was surgical in his application of force, whenever circumstances allowed the choice.

The patrol his platoon conducted four months into the six month tour was meant to be routine.

Routine did not, of course, mean _safe_.

This part of Helmand had been relatively secure in recent months, and the Fifth had been among the front line troops who’d engaged with local villages to dig wells and irrigation channels. John and Ollie had sung _Lion King_ songs for the little kids who’d watched them put up a wall of a school, and some of the older kids had in return had taught them the ungentle art of kite fighting, where each kite flier tried to sever the other’s with their glass-coated strings.

The upshot was that the unit knew people here; John had given medical assistance to a few of the locals, within the limits of his capacity as a soldier. It was hard to say whether they’d made friends – the villagers were too vulnerable, caught between the Taliban on one side and the troops on the other and mostly just trying to survive, for anyone to outright declare friendship. But they had a good working relationship and were familiar with each other.

Most importantly, the villagers didn’t want the Taliban fighters in their midst any more than the British army did.

The Taliban had been steadily making a push back in, however, and intel indicated they were creeping back through this green stretch of the Helmand valley. So here was a platoon from the Fifth Northumberland on this hot, sunny, summer day, coming through on a regular patrol to check that everything was still secure. Major Ferguson was accompanying the operation, as he sometimes did. His presence was unusual for the army but not uncommon for Ferguson. Majors would normally be back at the compound, coordinating platoon and company activities from the base, but Ferguson’s support of John’s somewhat odd career wasn’t the only way Rob Ferguson liked to bend the rules.

Today he was here on a front line visit to ‘get a fresh eyeball on the situation’ he’d said. John knew that the Major also liked to keep tabs on how the Fusiliers’ new privates, here on their first tour, were doing. Two of the lads, Gaines and Davis, had lost close mate to an IED ten days back, and Ferguson felt it his duty to make sure they were doing all right.

His demonstrable concern for the men was one of the things that had made Ferguson so beloved of the whole company. Frankly, a bunch of the guys back at the base were bitterly disappointed to not be out on patrol with their Major today.

Ferguson and Ollie Miller spoke to Paiman, the village _malik_ , first. The conversation in Pashto was terse, but Paiman grudgingly nodded when the Major spoke rapidly, with economical but expressive gestures.

The Major gave his orders softly and succinctly, and the platoon moved quickly to follow them, splitting into smaller groups to search among the houses first, next planning to move towards the trails and ditches through the poppy field leading from the squat, pale-beige clay houses down to the Helmand river.

Paiman stood beside the road, arms folded, his mouth pursed tightly, eyes squinting in the light, so resolutely reserved it was like he was carved from stone.

Everyone was on alert, as usual, but it was still routine.

Only, it wasn’t. What should have been straightforward and even familiar in the village was off, somehow. Nobody was thrilled that the army had to come through on a regular basis, villagers or soldiers, but usually everyone was borderline resigned to it all.

Today there …something _taut_. Like static electricity before a storm.

John could see Ferguson didn’t like it. _John_ didn’t like it. Ollie didn’t like it. Nobody bloody liked it, in the platoon or in the village. People who normally greeted them with at least a modicum of civility were today terse or quiet or just plain missing. Maybe they were simply uneasy knowing the Taliban was on the prowl in their area again. Or maybe they knew something. Or maybe they were hiding something.

 _Maybe maybe maybe_. It was a bloody nightmare, messing with everyone’s heads.

“Murray, on the guns,” Ferguson ordered _sotto voce_ , “And keep Okenado, Davis and Gaines with you.”

Bill nodded and leaned against the gun mounted on their Warrior, his apparent nonchalance hardly masking his wariness. Tom Okenado echoed his stance by the mounted gun in the front seat. They were old hands at this game. The new privates, Davis and Gaines, took up their positions, rifles held at the ready across their chests though not aimed at anything – but they were restless, no doubt thinking of their friend, so recently killed.

John, rifle also held in readiness, squinted across the field of white, purple and reddish poppies, looking for movement that might betray something other than the shift of the wind. The food crops were closer to the houses and offered little cover. Little enough to eat, too. There’d not been enough rain yet this season.

 _That’s their livelihood out there_ , John thought, resigned to the idea now. The farmers didn’t have an awful lot, and without the poppy trade they’d have an awful lot less. The Americans sometimes burned the fields – John had seen it – but the British Army had recognised such tactics as impractical and likely to build more enmity than accord.

John cast his eyes back to the little road on which they’d arrived. Major Ferguson was with the third new lad, Liu, and Private Hickey, and they were conducting a careful sweep of the clay houses at the edge of the village. A ramshackle henhouse made of clay and wire was propped shut as the chickens roamed free, scratching around the ground for bugs.

John narrowed his eyes at the scene, something in it scraping along a nerve ending.

“Hey, Timon,” Ollie murmured at him, and John turned. He followed Ollie’s gaze through the window cut into the side of the clay house to their right.

They knew the family that lived there. The father had been killed by Taliban fighters two years ago, leaving the eldest boy Atash, now 17, head of the household. His 12 year old sister Farnaz did most of the caring for him and their little brother, nine year old Tabaan. Their mother was not robust and had recently recovered from a nasty chest infection. John had scrounged a course of antibiotics for her. As far as John could determine, the family was thankful, in their quiet way. There was less he could do for the lump he’d detected in her neck last time through. Perhaps it was benign. Perhaps not. He was trying to get permission to invite her back to the base for tests.

Today, the two youngest kids were standing outside their door. Inside, Atash stood tensely in front of his mother, Reha, who looked deeply unhappy. She shifted the traditional shawl draped over her head to hide her face.

“Reckon they might know something?” Ollie muttered to John.

John nodded curtly. He wasn’t terribly keen on using their fragile regard as leverage, but he wasn’t terribly keen on being shot by a sniper in an ambush, either.

Ollie radioed Ferguson. “Sir, the Atash house…”

Ferguson, who knew the village through reports as well as the occasional patrol, saw where Captain Miller was looking. “Go ahead, Captain Miller. Take Graeson with you.”

Corporal Graeson – Grae to his mates – fell in beside the Captain and walked up to the house. John hefted his rifle and cast his gaze up and down the street; up the rise; between the houses. He gestured to Second Lieutenant Scott – Angus – to follow him towards a path that led to the poppy fields behind the houses here.

John paused though, as Ollie and Grae went into Atash’s house, preceded by the little girl and her baby brother.

John wished the children had stayed outside. It wasn't presentiment so much as the dark voice of experience. Nothing this tense could possibly end well and as dangerous as it was outside right now, the close quarters of their small house could turn out to be even worse.

Skin prickling with foreboding, John signalled for Angus to halt, and then to follow him to the house. It wasn’t protocol, but John had the strong feeling that nothing about this day was going to be by the book.

He positioned himself by the window, listening to the limping conversation within, while he and Angus covered the ground between the house and the road, watching warily for furtive movements within the village itself. The occasional chicken darted between the spaces. Nothing more.

 _Wrong, wrong, wrong_ said John’s instincts, but there was nothing to react to.

Within, John could hear Ollie as he greeted Atash first, and then Reha. “Everything okay?” Ollie asked in Pashto, “Feel better?”

Reha didn’t reply.

“Family well?” Ollie asked.

“Yes,” Atash replied sharply, then fell silent again.

John didn’t like the sound of his voice. He gestured for Angus to keep his eye out, and turned to watch what was going on inside.

“No trouble?” Ollie asked Atash.

“No. Not if you go.” Atash’s hard expression grew more mulish. Angry, even. He glared at Ollie and Grae like they'd failed or betrayed him somehow, and that worried John far more than Reha’s silence had done. He understood the silence, borne of misery. The source of Atash’s anger was too nebulous to be useful.

Ollie moved forward into the little house carefully, his bulk made more looming by his helmet and body armour, the rifle and his pack. He lifted the rifle slightly in his arms. And then he stopped, dead still, and flicked his eyes towards the kitchen at the back of the room. John could see that Grae followed the movement and adjusted his grip on the gun. John adjusted his own grip, too.

The kitchen wasn't a separate room so much as a section at the back of the house. A slender internal wall created a partition from the main room. From this area, door opened into the domestic garden and a track down to the river.

Nothing was visible now, but John was very certain that the kitchen was occupied.

John remained very calm. Adrenalin thrummed through him and he was hyper alert, hearing and seeing everything. He could smell everything too - cumin and eggplant; sweat and the sickness from Reha's ill health festering in that house; cold ashes from the kitchen fire; the sun-baked poppy field beyond the back door; the brackish river.

A faint shuffle; cloth against wood, perhaps, or a breath in the still air.

John tensed, but he saw Grae signalled to Ollie. Someone was definitely in that kitchen area. The whole family was in the living area – _so who was_ _hiding_?

The footstep on the hard floor behind the partition was faint, possibly imagined, but you survived, everyone knew, by presuming the enemy existed. Being wrong could get you laughed at. Being dead was clearly worse

Ollie stepped to the left before he even saw the nose of the rifle, and by then Grae had already dropped to one knee and the three shots cracked out simultaneously, exploding in a deafening roll of noise in the small room.

The gunman fired too soon and aimed poorly. A bullet flashed through the open window and past John’s helmet – he felt the wind and heat of its close-shave passage. Grae and Ollie had been both better and luckier, and the gunman toppled forward to the floor, his chest a bloom of sodden red cloth.

Angus had swung towards the door, weapon raised, but froze at John’s signal. John didn’t want to push any more people into that tiny space, especially not with the kids so vulnerable. The little ones had jumped and pressed against their mother, who clung to them and looked fearfully to Atash. John could see that none of them were hurt, though – nor was Atash.

John flinched at the venom and despair he could see in Atash’s eyes; he wondered if Ollie had seen it too, as his friend moved forward to confirm the kill and take up the dead man’s rifle.

Outside, there was a gunshot. A second. A few faint pops coming up from the fields; some return fire from between the houses.

_Well, **fuck**._

John hunkered down to a crouch as he and Angus scoured the area between them and the road, but there was nothing to see. The sporadic gunfire so far was coming from the fields and the river. John signalled for Angus to cover the gap on his side of the house and John began to move towards joining him. He presumed Ollie and Grae would leave the Atash house now, and the four of them would move to new positions, officers separated as per protocol, to engage with the enemy.

But as John crossed to the door and glanced inside, he saw that this was not how things were playing out.

Ollie and Grae, rifles at the ready, stood with their backs to the door, facing Atash, pale and tense and furious. Atash was pointing a pistol at them. A pistol John was sure he had not owned before today. It was a miracle neither Ollie nor Grae hadn’t fired yet… but they _knew_ these people. This family. These people weren’t the enemy. These were the people they were in Afghanistan to _help_.

"Stop!" Atash’s English was heavily accented, but it could hardly be mistaken.

Ollie held up one hand placatingly. “Put the gun down, Atash.”

“No,” Atash said, “I can’t.”

John shifted the rifle in his grip. Lifted it. But Ollie and Grae were between him and the target. _Target_. _Jesus. Atash is just a kid. A seventeen year old boy._ A kid who tried hard to be a strong man, to look after his family, to keep them fed and cared for. In England, he would have been at bloody _school_ still.

John really, really, really didn’t want shoot, but he wasn’t sure he was going to get a choice.

John could hear gunfire increasing, outside. More shots. Orders crackling over the radio – Ferguson reorganising. Shouts from the villagers – protest or warning? John couldn’t tell.

“Don’t do this to your family,” Ollie said, or something like it, in Pashto. John’s Pashto wasn’t as good as Ollie’s.

“I’m doing it for them,” said Atash bitterly.

“No,” came a soft voice, and John saw Atash’s sister stepped towards him. “We don’t need the Taliban.”

“Shut up, girl,” Atash spat at her, but he looked as miserable as he did angry, “Do not speak back to me.”

“Atash, please…” Farnaz reached for him, palm up.

Atash reached towards her too, and John dared to hope, just a little, despite the fact that it was not surrender he saw in Atash’s gesture. But the hope died as Atash clamped his free hand around Farnaz’s wrist and dragged her to the ground in front of him. Farnaz squeaked in surprise and pain and gazed up beseechingly into the muzzle of the pistol. Tears started in her eyes.

Atash pointed the pistol at Ollie. “Put down your rifles or I will kill her.”

Someone shrieked outside in that bright sunny day. A crack of gunfire. Someone was raging in Pashto about people shooting at the goats. Beside him, Angus had their position covered but he was only too aware, as well, that something bad was going down inside. His sightlines were even worse than John’s.

“You won’t kill your sister,” said Ollie, and John so much wanted to believe it. He’d seen Atash with his family. How seriously he took his role as the head of their household. Atash had said he wanted Farnaz to go to school to learn to read and write. He wanted to find her a good husband. He wanted her to be happy. Atash loved his sister, John was sure of it.

Atash pressed the muzzle of the pistol against Farnaz’s temple. “Put down your rifle, Captain Miller, or I will kill her.”

John took a breath. Held it. Kept calm, calm, calm. Moved the rifle in his grip. Just inside the house, Ollie and Grae held their positions, believing it was suicide to disarm; fearing it might murder the girl to hold their positions.

Atash dug the pistol harder into his sister’s skin. She yelped and wept and stared pleadingly at her brother.

Ollie broke first, releasing the trigger and offering up the rifle. “Atash, no. Stop. Please. See. I’m putting the rifle down. See? I’m putting it down.”

Ollie began to crouch, to lower the rifle to the floor. Grae flicked an uncertain glance towards his commanding officer and reluctantly let the muzzle of his own rifle shift away from the target.

Atash twitched the pistol away from Farnaz’s head, towards Ollie, and pulled the trigger as he pushed his sister aside.

John fired into the house a fraction of a second later as the sightlines finally cleared.

Atash spun away and down, a red ribbon streaming from his chest as he fell. Reha screamed; Farnaz sobbed; the boy, Tabaan, ran to his big brother and pushed his little hands against the hole and tried to make the bleeding stop.

John had already darted into the cool shadows, stooping to scoop up the dropped pistol – _secure the area first, secure the scene._ He shoved the weapon into his belt as Grae trained his gun on the distraught family ( _too late, much too late_ ) and dropped to his knees to check Ollie’s injuries.

Ollie stared wide-eyed at the ceiling, terror in his eyes, blood pulsing from the ruin of his throat. The only sound he could make was a faint gurgle – larynx gone.

John worked fast, pushing his fingers into the mangled flesh, trying to find the artery to halt the haemorrhaging. He was telling Ollie it was going to be fine; telling lies as fast as he could and trying to stop the bleeding but it was no good, it was never going to be any good, and they both knew it. Ollie’s dark eyes locked with John’s and begged John to keep telling him lies.

“It’s fine,” John said, “I’ve got you.”

John’s hands were red and slick with Ollie’s blood as the light went out in Ollie’s eyes.

John became aware of Farnaz hitting his arm with her small fists, punching him in impotent fury and grief. “He would not have hurt me,” she shrieked at him in Pashto, “Atash would never hurt me.”

Grae glanced at the little girl, gun still pointed at the youngest boy and his mother, but he looked lost, like he couldn’t work out who the enemy was supposed to be. A sick woman, a little girl and an even littler boy? John shared his heartsick uncertainty.

Reha held her dead boy in her arms and wailed. Tabaan shook Atash by his collar, trying, it seemed, to wake him up. Farnaz glared rage at John. “He would never hurt me!”

 _He’d hurt us, though. He would kill us. He did. Your precious fucking brother murdered my mate_.

But all John did was to rise, wipe his hands on his trousers, and grip his rifle in both hands. “Check the house for weapons,” he said to Grae, “Report when it’s secure.” Grae nodded and, with grim care, searched the two dead men and then the rest of the little house for firearms.

John positioned himself at the door, one eye on the family clinging together, and asked Angus for a sit-rep.

“I’ve radioed base,” Angus said, with an anguished grimace past John to where he knew Ollie’s body lay, “The Major says to hold our position until it’s clearer where the enemy position is. Looks like they’re skirmishing along the river banks; we might have caught ‘em on their way back out, sir.”

Angus was crouched close to the corner of the house, rifle sweeping left and right, seeking a target and finding none in this part of the village. The action was still beyond the house, in the fields leading to the river, as other members of the platoon worked their way between the houses and along the tracks.

John couldn’t see half the men, spread out as they were among the houses. A man in the loose pants, skull cap and cotton shirt of a local, stained dark red now, was sprawled in the dirt. John didn’t recognise him.

Bill and Tom were firing from the back of the Warrior, but they were in a bad position – they needed to be closer to the line between village and fields. Gaines and Davis were, like Angus, seeking but failing to find clear targets.

Further along the dusty path that passed for a road, Major Ferguson was hunkered down with Liu and Hickey behind the limited shelter of the closed henhouse’s low clay wall.

Gunfire from the fields behind was getting more sporadic. Dash was reporting several kills; reporting what seemed to be a Taliban withdrawal, back towards the river, as Angus had said.

John didn’t trust it. There was something else wrong. Some small thing that hid a big thing.

Three or four chickens ran past, flapping and squawking in terror at the noise and smoke and the smell of blood. One ran towards the roost, but of course it wouldn’t get in. The door was wired shut.

_The door was wired shut._

“Major Ferguson,” John snapped into his radio, “Get away from the henhouse, sir.”

“What’s that Watson?” Ferguson’s voice could barely be heard.

“Clear out from the henhouse, sir. It’s either storing fuel or ammo.”

“Right.”

John dropped to his knee; lifted the rifle to sweep the area as Ferguson harried Liu and Hickey away from the dubious shelter of the henhouse. John fired, pumping bullets into the area past the henhouse, where shadows moved and sudden tell-tale spits of dust indicated an active enemy position.

Angus, to John’s right, had turned and was shooting down the space between houses towards oncoming fighters that John couldn’t see. To John’s left, Grae had left the family to their grief and was outside at the other corner, covering that area. John was too aware of the open door at his back. It made his skin crawl and he moved so that he had a wall behind him again. A quick glance inside showed Reha pushing her two youngest children into a corner, behind furniture, and covering their bodies with her own, desperate to protect them from stray gunfire. God knew, plenty of civilians had died that way before.

More gunfire. Things were hotting up, not settling down.

Not a withdrawal towards the river, no. The enemy had feinted to draw the platoon towards the more open fields and were now angling for an all-out assault, up the hill, into the village. Taliban crawling between the houses like spiders, where the platoon was likewise separated, while families hid inside, perhaps some of them hostage, perhaps some of them willing, or grudging-willing, like Atash had seemed to be before he, before…

_No time for that now. Survive first. Survive. Protect the team. Secure the situation, then first aid. **Survive**. Analysis can wait._

On the road, Gaines scrambled into the drivers’ seat and started the Warrior up the path to where they’d get a better line of fire on the poppy field. Bill, Davis at his side, swung the huge mounted gun in an arc, eying the way ahead for targets, finding none, sweeping back, while Tom manned the forward gun.

And the explosion of the undiscovered IED erupted like a volcano underneath the truck as it drove over the camouflaged bomb, and the force of it lifted the Warrior into the air like a Matchbox toy thrown by a kid in a tantrum.

John was on the radio as the vehicle went up, yelling g: “Men down! Men down! Prep for cas-evac as soon as we’re secure!” and he was gripping his rifle tightly as the Warrior flipped and landed in the road.

He saw Davis thrown out of the back of the truck, above the plume of smoke and dirt and metal fragments, arms and legs flung wide, his helmet streaming a ribbon of red, _oh Christ_ , and John never saw him land (though they found his bent and broken body later, much later).

To one side of the dirt road, a figure moved. Tom. He was crawling towards his dropped gun, having been thrown clear when the Warrior went up and over.

A ripple of repeated gun fire strafed across his body and he was still.

John glanced down to the road and he could see movement at the Warrior. Bill was pinned under the side of the toppled wreck. Gaines had dragged himself to sit with one shoulder pressed to the distorted underside of the vehicle and was firing at someone behind the henhouse who was firing at him. Around him was a pool of spilled petrol, and he seemed oblivious to the danger.

Twisted metal. A pinned body. For a flash, just a winking second, John saw the scene he’d imagined but never witnessed, of his mother in the wreckage of a family car. Crushed and pinched in a metal prison. Dying while a stranger held her hand.

The image flashed away, but the reality wasn’t exactly a heartening substitute.

John wanted to go down to them, but it was pretty obvious he’d never make it to the truck alive, and a dead soldier/medic was no good to anyone.

He shouldered his rifle and watched for an opportunity. A Taliban gunman running between the houses, firing, presented a clear target. John shot him through the brain and he dropped like a stone. Quick. Clean.

The air reverberated with gunfire as the battle began in earnest. John took patient aim and waited again. A shoulder appeared near the henhouse – someone attempting to get into the hidden stores. John squeezed the trigger and the limb bloomed red, the bullet burrowing sideways through shoulder and ribs to soft internal organs. A man slumped sideways and no longer moved.

Gunshots peppered the downed Warrior, the bullets striking sparks against exposed and twisted metal.

The spilled petrol began to burn. Gaines tried to scrabble away, but his left leg wasn’t working properly. _Broken._

John began to rise, the decision propelling his limbs even before his mind had registered the thought – _I am not going to let that kid burn_ – but before he could move, Major Ferguson burst out of shelter and ran towards Davis. Hickey and Liu were providing covering fire, and John shifted to follow their line.

John glanced into the room behind him once more – the family they’d helped ruin was huddled in a corner; Reha was praying loudly, a desperate chant to Allah. John could just see Farnaz’s grief-twisted face glaring at him over Reha’s shoulder.

But they weren’t armed and they weren’t a danger to him, so right now, they were a problem for later.

John could see the new enemy position now, so he took a breath and went still. No hurry in the world, here. No need to expend dozens of bullets when one, aimed right, would do the trick.

Target sighted. Inhale.

Squeeze the trigger. Exhale.

The kill. End of breath.

Shift the sights on the inhale. Second target. Pull. Exhale. The kill.

As he shifted slightly again, lining up the glimpse of a third fighter, that gunman sent a spray of bullets onto the truck. The bullets missed Ferguson as he hooked his hands under Gaines’s arms and pulled (and at the same time, Hickey and Liu between them sent the gunman into the dirt, a ripped and splattered mess) but the sparks, _oh fuck_ , the sparks, and the petrol fumes, and uniforms soaked in the stuff…

Gaines and Ferguson went up together, like roman candles, like bonfire night, _oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck…_

Shrieking and screaming, the two of them flung apart. Gaines clawed at his uniform, at his burning hair, and another shot came from somewhere and he slumped in the dirt.

John’s radio went nuts and realisation struck him. It was him again. Just him. No Major, no Captain. Just John fucking Watson again. _Jesus._

Major Ferguson reeled, burning, burning, and a spit of gunfire followed him and John, seeing this, watching this split second, thought: _is that a mercy shot? Did they take a mercy shot at Gaines?_ _Did they…?_

John thought for a minute he was going to be sick.

John barked orders into the radio as he rose to his feet. He glanced behind him again, ran to the chair where Atash and his father before him used to sit and snatched up the decorative rug folded over it.

More orders as he went to the door, peered out, and the men of the Fifth were coming in now, he could see them, and he gave crisp, clear orders where to fire, to give him cover.

And then, like a saint protected by providence or magic or the sheer bloody-minded rage in him, John ran out of that mud house and into the open air. Ran, not crouching, because he could be faster upright, across the field of fire and shook out the blanket as he ran and he threw himself at the Major, wrapped the blanket around him, dropped, rolled, came to rest at the shelter of the Warrior, not even noticing the bullets chewing up the ground at his feet, like they didn’t exist.

To John’s right, Ferguson, wrapped in the rug, groaned. Whimpered. Half his face was a blistered mess. Half his uniform charred and sticking to his body. Half burned to a fucking cinder.

John grabbed his kit, grabbed the morphine, gave Ferguson a shot.

To John’s left, Bill panted and grit his teeth and looked to John for salvation.

John glanced down. Bill’s leg was crushed under the truck. To get him out, John would have to lift the truck.

Ferguson hissed and moaned and it was awful, because that was a sound from hell, and the smell of burned cloth and burned flesh was the stink of hell, and _fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck._

“John,” Bill whimpered, “Jesus, John…”

John whipped his belt out and strapped Bill’s leg above the mangled, compressed ruin under the truck. He pulled the tourniquet tight. Then he gave Bill morphine.

John glanced up at the bullets blurring across the space he’d just crossed. He had no idea how he’d made it across unscathed. Assuming he had. He didn’t bother to check. Nothing hurt right now, and he’d either do what had to be done, or he’d die. No telling which it would be yet.

Bullets pinged off the vehicle and John crouched over Bill for a moment before pulling back.

“I’m coming back for you, Bill.”

Gunfire whined around them and John snapped back into attack mode. He raised his rifle, tracked back to the incoming gunfire, caught site of a Taliban fighter bobbing up for another go. John squeezed the trigger. A miss this time, as the man pulled back.

_How many of those piss-bollocksing, turd-sucking fuckbuckets were here, anyway? Too many. Too fucking many._

“John…”

“Do you trust me, Bill?”

“John…”

“Do you trust me?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“I have to get Rob out first. If I don’t see to him right away, he’s done for. But I’m coming back for you.”

“Jesus…”

“I’m coming back, Bill. You’ve got my belt as a tourniquet and I bloody well want it back.”

Bill laughed, terrified and crying. “Well then, you’d better come back and get it, Johnny.”

“That’s the plan, Bill. You hold tight. I’ll come back. I promise.”

“Okay. Okay. I know you will. Fuck. Now get going.”

With that, John turned and grabbed the edges of the rug, flipped them out. He radioed for cover, and Angus and Grae and anyone else who could do it gave him that cover.

Then he dragged Robert Ferguson’s blistered body up the incline to the house he’d just left, because it was the one house he knew was secure, and he dragged his commanding officer into shelter, into the middle of the floor, and he ran to the kitchen and came back with jugs of cool water, filtered clean with simple filters the army had supplied to the village to improve their water supply. He poured this carefully over Rob’s face, his body, while Robert cried in agony.

Someone clattered into the house and John raised his rifle, but it was Paul Jasper, the official unit medic.

“Sterile bandages over the skin,” John instructed as he rose, gripping the gun, “Pour cool water over him, but don’t overdo it. Hypothermia…”

“Got it,” Jasper told him, “I was there for your burns update lecture, sir.”

John turned, paused at the door, radioed again. Ran again, across that open field with bullets stuttering around him but falling short or going wide or maybe just missing him by sheer bloody magic.

He dropped beside Bill, who grinned or grimaced or simply cried with relief, who could tell? John couldn’t hear anything anymore.

“Back-up’s coming,” yelled John over his own deafness from the whine of bullets.

The undercarriage of the truck pinged and sparked and something struck John’s helmet but didn’t pierce it and _Jesus fucking Christ they did not have time to wait. Ten minutes to back up, to air support, and they didn’t fucking have it._

John tried not to do the thing he thought he would have to do. He grabbed Bill under the arms and pulled, and Bill screamed and screamed and didn’t budge, and John had to drop as the bullets came like black hail again, and _Christ, oh Christ, oh Christ…_

“Bill, I’m going to have to cut you out.”

Bill blinked.

“With what? Bolt cutters?”

“Not the truck, Bill.”

“But… but…”

 _It’s crushed beyond recovery. You’ll lose it anyway;_ was the thing neither of them voiced.

They looked at each other, reading anguish. Reading purpose. Reading the will to live, the will to survive.

“Or we can wait,” said John, “I’ll wait with you. I’m staying right here, Bill, okay? I am not fucking leaving you.”

He hunkered over Bill again as the bullets came flying down to them, too exposed by the side of the road, the sudden and concentrated target of a group of Taliban fighters who knew they were running out of luck. The rest of the platoon were on the move, looking for the gunmen still secreted around the area, but John and Bill were too far in the open.

“John.” Bill was shaking all over. Sick from blood loss. Sick from the crushed bones of his lower leg and the smashed hand he’d hardly dared look at because he kept counting and there weren’t enough fingers. In agony and in terror and in grief because he was going to die here, and John was going to die with him, John wasn’t going to let him be alone.

“It’s okay, Bill.” John rested his fingers on Bill’s cheek and his mouth twitched in what might once have been a smile. “I’m here. I’m not leaving.”

Bill drew a sobbing breath.

“Do it.”

“What?”

“Cut it. Cut it off. Get us the fuck out of here.”

More gunfire – less than before, maybe, but still too much. A bullet tore through a fold of John’s jacket. A sting, a smear of red, nothing to signify really, but a signal that his lucky streak was running out.

The radio sparked. Eight minutes till support.

“We can wait,” John said.

“We can’t.” Bill was weeping. “We can’t. You gotta get me out of here, and you’ve gotta get out of here, so do it. _Do it do it do it_.”

John gave Bill as much morphine as he dared.

The leg was so torn and crushed, it only took two minutes with a sharp knife. The tourniquet held.

One more radio burst of instructions, then John took Bill by the shoulders of his uniform and pulled. He pulled Bill backwards right up that slope and into the house.

And then he treated and dressed the raw wound and went back to Ferguson and left Jasper to it and stood by the door instead. Gathering reports, directing the Fifth.

The henhouse went up in flames. Fuel, then. Good, probably, that most of the chickens were not in there.

_Why I give a fuck about the chickens, I don’t know._

When the air strike came, John stood outside to get a better look to give instructions.

“Try not to bomb the houses,” he said, “I’ve got wounded in here, and the rest are civilians.”

Choppers came in low, and the next thing, the Taliban survivors were being herded away from the village. Death before surrender seemed to be the motto, though, and the kill count doubled before the guns went quiet.

The chinooks were on their way for evac and John went back into Atash’s house (Tabaan’s now, he supposed wearily) to find Farnaz kneeling beside Major Ferguson, ladling cool water over the sterile bandages draped over his burns. John had to bite down on an urge to shove her away from him.

The girl looked up at him with her dark, sad eyes, then returned to her gentle, merciful work.

Jasper returned from the kitchen with another jug of water from the pump.

“No more wounded, sir?’

John shook his head, short and sharp. “Nothing else serious for the Fifth.” Minor injuries, the dead and these two. _What a fucking cock-up._ “Three civilian casualties, four injuries. Dash is seeing to those for the moment, and we’ll get them back to base for treatment.”

“You’ve been hit.”

John glanced down at the blood on his sleeve. “It can wait. What do you need here?”

”Evac,” said Jasper crisply, “And a miracle wouldn’t go astray.”

“Evac’s coming, anyway.” John had never been so weary in his life.

The radio sparked up again, and he turned away to issue more orders. He glanced at Bill, bandaged and broken and still in better shape than Rob Ferguson. Then he started for the outside again.

“Just so you know,” said Jasper suddenly, “I was talking to Farnaz. She… tried to explain.” Jasper spoke pretty good Pashto. The people here knew him well, too.

John turned to him and raised a sceptical eyebrow.

Jasper glanced to the side of the room where Reha clutched her youngest son and rocked him, both of them too exhausted and despairing to do more than cling to each other now. Atash’s body lay beside them, and Reha still held his cold hand tight in hers.

“Farnaz says the Taliban promised them food and medicine. Then they told Atash they’d pay him if he joined them and helped. And then they said they’d take the little boy by force if he didn’t. Farnaz too. A wife for someone, apparently. Bribes and blackmail. I don’t think they were given much choice.”

“I don’t think any of us were,” said John tonelessly, and he went out to direct the mop-up.

They gave Lieutenant John Watson the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross for saving Rob Ferguson and Bill Murray under heavy enemy fire. John honestly didn’t know what to do with it. Was it a medal for failing Ollie as well? Was it a medal for shooting Atash, who was just a boy trying to protect his family? Did he get it for the killing as well as the rescue?

John had been proud of that first medal. This time, all he could see reflected in it was so much blood and the smell of burnt meat and a knife through shattered bone and the sobbing rage of a sick woman who had lost her son.

And for what?

John no longer had any idea.


	7. Your Broken Boy is Here Tonight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock gathers clues from everyone he can - from Ferguson's wife Milena and son Arty to his therapist. Sherlock's methods (and manners) are as unorthodox as ever - but Robert Ferguson trusts John Watson, and John Watson trusts Sherlock Holmes, so whatever it looks like, there's a resolution coming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is from This is a Call, by Alex Lloyd.
> 
> Plot elements come from episode The Sign of Three and the short story The Sussex Vampire.

Rob Ferguson sat at his kitchen table, the walking stick he’d used to get there propped against the edge of it. His wife sat on the other side from him, looking at him with shock, pity and despair. Her husband did not look well. He was haggard and dishevelled, and he wouldn’t meet her gaze.

Milena held tight to Arty, who wriggled until he could escape her grasp, whereupon he hurried to his father and leaned on his good leg.

“Daddy? Are you okay now? Did they make you better yet?”

Ferguson smiled ruefully at his son but otherwise didn’t move. “Not yet, Arty. We don’t know what’s wrong yet.”

“Well, that’s not entirely true,” said Sherlock, “The _what_ seems perfectly clear. We don’t know the why yet, or the how. So let’s go over it again.”

Bill sat up straighter in his own seat. “You know what’s happening?”

Sherlock didn’t bother replying, focused as he was on the Fergusons. John nodded to Bill and gestured to keep quiet, and Bill, restless but trusting John, fell silent.

Milena took up the slack, however. “You know something? Tell me.”

“We know what’s happening to Rob is not likely to be a PTSD response,” said John, when Sherlock didn’t answer, apparently lost in thought as he stared out of the kitchen window towards the greenhouse, “For these episodes to be so new and so strong after nearly two decades is very unusual. It’s much more likely that there’s a new factor involved. We think…”

“Tell me about your garden,” interrupted Sherlock suddenly, still staring out the window, “Who looks after it?”

Frowning, Milena followed his gaze. “The herb garden is Robert’s. I look after the greenhouse. I keep tropical plants.”

“And the rest of the garden? The flowerbeds and so on?”

“I do, mostly. In the spring, the pollen can affect Robert’s breathing. Can’t it, darling?” She glanced over to her husband and laid a hand gently over his, folded carefully on the table in front of him. He gave her a wan smile and nodded.

“It’s been bad this spring and I’ve been having more trouble breathing when the wind’s coming in easterly. We think it’s because of the factory down the motorway they’re demolishing to build a business park.”

Sherlock was still looking out at the garden. “I see you’ve put a wall of new plants in the greenhouse,” he said, head tilted to one side. “Succulents.”

“Yes,” said Milena, puzzled, “I sometimes extract aloe vera for a home-made moisturiser and minor burn remedy. My grandmother’s recipe. I’m trying some new varieties.”

Sherlock cast her a sour look. “The science on aloe vera as a burn remedy is sketchy at best, and hardly suitable as treatment for...” the merest glance at Robert, “…severe burns.”

Milena glared back. “I use it for minor burns only. I find it effective.”

Sherlock peered at her hands, resting reassuringly over her husband’s. There was a recent, small burn mark on the side of one hand, another on her thumb. “Ah. A clumsy cook, I see.” He waved the implications away. “You experiment a lot with plant extracts, do you?”

“It is a hobby,” she said stiffly.

“It ought to be a _science_ ,” Sherlock retorted with acid disapproval.

Melina wasn’t to be cowed. “Then perhaps someone with expertise should perform the appropriate studies.”

Sherlock pursed his lips. “I’m rather busy at present, trying to determine who wishes to harm your husband.”

“Then perhaps you had best get on with _that_.”

“Yes, perhaps I should.” Sherlock turned away from the window and resumed stalking around the room, picking up and replacing items at random, it seemed. Letters. Bills. Pens. An apple. Photographs stuck to the fridge with magnets. A prescription due for renewal; a notice about an upcoming county fair; a packet of parsley seeds; a toy lion; some of Arty’s scrawling crayon drawings, in which he’d depicted clouds and wind with heavy black lines. “What else has changed in the last few months?”

Ferguson blinked at his wife, a furrow between his brows, and turned to watch Sherlock’s progress around the kitchen. “Not much. I’ve been settling in with my new therapist this year…”

“ _New_ therapist?” Sherlock turned sharply.

“Well, not new any more, really. Dr Miliotis took over from Geoff Polash around a year ago, when Geoff retired. But I was seeing him for so long I suppose I still think of Iona as ‘new’.”

Sherlock appeared to lose interest. “No change in routine there then, I suppose.”

“Not really. Geoff and I were planning to drop back to quarterly visits, with calls between if I felt them necessary, but when Iona took over we thought we’d keep those visits monthly for a while until we knew each other better. We’ve haven’t discussed dialling it back yet. We’re due to review the schedule next month.”

Sherlock batted the whole idea away with a curt wave of his hand, though John thought he detected a glimmer of… doubt? Judgement? John’s mouth quirked briefly into a hard line in return, and Sherlock’s eyebrow flickered briefly. Maybe they’d talk about it later. John knew full well that some people needed therapy for much longer than he’d had; some for life. John had found Ella useful at times, though he’d abandoned her when Sherlock was Away. Maybe he’d needed it more then, but it had been impossible to discuss his issues with any honesty, without potentially risking lives through sharing too much knowledge.

But right after he’d been shot and sent home from Afghanistan, John had found there was a lot of work to do with Ella, especially with his trust issues. He’d been absolutely bollocks at talking about it, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t been helpful.

After what Robert had been through, John wasn’t surprised that regular therapy was going to remain part of the Major’s life for the foreseeable future.

Sherlock paced some more, then whirled on the spot, his face pinched in irritation. “There’s not enough data. Ferguson, who hates you?”

Ferguson’s lips twitched into a wry half-smile. “You mean apart from the usual?”

“The usual?”

Ferguson shrugged. “I was a senior officer in an ugly and unpopular war, Mr Holmes, and men died under my command. Of course there are people who hate me. I’m not always sure I blame them.” Milena frowned and touched his arm. He patted her hand. “Most of them think I already got what I deserved, though.”

“Except that you survived; and you have a wife and a son, a future.” Sherlock pointed out, glancing down at Arty, who was looking up at him with concern. Sherlock hunkered down to be at eye level with the boy. “Arty, what have you seen this year? Anything strange? Anybody coming to see your dad who you didn’t like?”

“I don’t like Mrs Hathaway, she says I’m too noisy,” said Arty solemnly, “But I don’t know how to play aeroplanes without making aeroplane noises. I suppose I could play at being a glider, they’re really quiet, but they’re no fun. Fighter planes are better but I like helicopters best.” Arty proceeded to make a very creditable helicopter noise for a few seconds, twisting his splayed hands over his head like stubby rotors. Then he stopped. “But Mrs Hathaway says I should be quiet and not bother Daddy.”

Ferguson rested his good hand on his son’s head. “It doesn’t bother me, Arty, you make all the chopper noises you want.”

“The Mrs Hathaways of this world don’t understand the need for realism,” responded Sherlock seriously. With a sideways glance at Ferguson he added, “These helicopter impersonations don’t bother you?”

Ferguson’s lip curled sardonically. “No. But I still can’t abide a barbecue.”

Sherlock grinned sharply at him, his eyes hard with understanding, then turned back to Arty. “Anything else? Any visitors? Anything that scares you?”

“I don’t like it on windy days.” Arty frowned. “Windy days are scary. And they make Daddy cough and the tree outside my room scratches on the glass to get in and it’s like the big bad wolf coming to blow our house down.”

“The wind can’t blow your house down, Arty.”

“I know,” said Arty, scowling and pouting, “But it feels like it does.”

“We keep telling him the wind is just a big breeze,” Melina told Sherlock with an accusatory glare, though her voice was soft in deference to her son. “There’s nothing to be scared of.”

Ignoring her, Sherlock put a hand on Arty’s shoulder and squeezed. “I know it seems frightening,” he said, “It used to frighten me when I was very small, as though it was the world shouting at me all the time. I grew up with rather a lot of shouting in my house. It didn’t help that my big brother, who was something of an arse at the time, told me stories about the East Wind and how it would blow everything away. But do you know what I worked out?”

“What?” asked Arty, wide-eyed.

“One: that a loud wind, like the shouting in my house, was a warning, and it gave me time to prepare. And two: I learned that I could _be_ the East Wind. That I could shout back at the world, much louder, and very much smarter, and that _it_ had better prepare for _me_.”

Arty blinked owlishly at him.

Sherlock sighed and ruffled the boy’s hair. “Never mind. What’s important is that is that the wind stops again. I promise. In fact…” Sherlock rose up suddenly and tapped Ferguson on the arm. “Up you get, Major, we need to visit this therapist of yours. John, I’ll need you. Not you, Bill. Stay here and keep an eye on Mrs Ferguson and Arty. Arty, show Bill that scratchy tree near your window, perhaps he and your mother can prune it while we take a drive with your father. We’ll be back before tea.”

He strode out to the car and got into the driver’s seat. A few minutes later, John was assisting Ferguson and his cane into the passenger seat before getting into the back. “Are you going to explain yourself, Sherlock?” he asked.

“You know I don’t theorise without data. I need data from the therapist. I need Major Ferguson here to get me in to see her. What’s the address?” Warily, Ferguson gave it. Sherlock steered the car onto the motorway.

“We should call…”

“No. I find a surprise visit is always appreciated. Don’t we, John?”

John grimaced, remembering all the surprise visits that ended up in punches, gunshots, the employment of blunt instruments and sharp implements and, on one very special occasion, the attempt to suffocate John with a hand-knitted vulva cushion. (Sherlock had been no help at all, after he’d pointed out to the sexologist’s murderous step-brother that he was ‘trying to kill a man with woolly labia’. The idiot had recoiled in some weird misogynist instinct; John had clouted him with the sculpture of a penis – another part of the sexology collection – and Sherlock had texted the photos he’d been taking of the whole thing to Mary, who laughed herself sick for two days.)

Ferguson gave him the kind of piercingly disapproving glare that had once made the lesser ranks tremble in their combat boots. “You’re a piece of work, Holmes.”

“I am,” Sherlock agreed, “But I get results and I believe there’s a resolution not far away. I need to confirm some things. This therapist of yours, does she know your wife?”

“A little. We sometimes have family sessions, to help Milena and I work through some issues together.”

“When was the most recent family session?”

Ferguson considered this and frowned. “Not recently. In the first month with Iona, and another three months later, but not since. Iona didn’t seem to think it necessary. I don’t think Milena liked her much, either,” he conceded.

“And do you like your therapist, Major Ferguson?”

“I couldn’t work with her if I didn’t,” said Ferguson, “It takes a lot of trust.”

He missed Sherlock glancing into the rear vision mirror to see John’s expression. John was looking back at the reflection of Sherlock’s eyes, one eyebrow raised, the two of them having a full and silent conversation about trust and therapists for a moment, before Sherlock returned to the matter at hand.

“What do you like about her?”

“She’s honest, forthright, and she understands the military. Her father, husband and children have all served. It helps a lot, that she knows what my whole family is going through, not just me.” Ferguson shook his head. “In the last two months she’s been trying to help with these… episodes. She thinks Milena is triggering them somehow… not that it’s her fault or that she deserves it, but that… something’s happening at home.” His face was creased with sorrow. “I can’t agree, but I don’t know what’s happening. Surely something must be bringing this thing on? And you think it’s poison? But how…?”

“Data first,” said Sherlock, otherwise unforthcoming, “Theories later.”

They only had to wait ten minutes at the clinic before Dr Iona Miliotis could see them. The doctor – in her late 60s, elegant and poised – greeted Robert Ferguson warmly.

“Robert, how can I help today?” she said with a mild, pleasant accent. Greek, Sherlock rather thought, though well-tempered by decades lived in United Kingdom.

“I’ve… had another episode,” Ferguson told her, his voice dropping to an unhappy murmur. “These people, they’re trying to help me. This is Sh…”

“Don’t mind us,” Sherlock interrupted, “We’re just here for the ride, aren’t we Doctor?” He addressed the title to John, who nodded and took Sherlock’s lead. Sherlock turned his back on her and examined the PhD hanging on her wall.

Iona Miliotis returned her attention to Robert. “You should have called me, or better, come to see me.”

“I was afraid to have Milena drive me,” said Ferguson, “I wasn’t… safe for her.”

“You were afraid I’d have you committed to care,” responded the doctor sternly, but not unkindly.

Ferguson lifted his chin and met her gaze. “Yes.”

“You know I wouldn’t do that without trying everything else first, Robert.”

“What’s left to try?” Ferguson sounded resigned.

“I… excuse me?” Dr Miliotis turned away from her patient to glare at Sherlock, who had thrown himself into her chair and was poking around her desk, opening drawers, jabbing into her pen holder, picking up and replacing the two photographs on her desk (one an old graduation photograph; the other showing the doctor as a much younger woman, with her husband and a young boy) and generally being an intrusive arse. John stood beside the desk, watching Sherlock, trying to see what was important in the items picked up and discarded, wondering what he was up to, but knowing he was definitely up to something. Sherlock was never purposeless.

“Excused,” said Sherlock without looking up, “Tell me, Dr Miliotis – may I call you Iona – Iona, tell me, this man is a clear danger to his wife, to his son, to his neighbours probably. Why wouldn’t you lock him up? Why on earth didn’t you lock him up two months ago when these episodes began in earnest?” He tugged open a drawer and shoved the contents around impatiently before withdrawing a small canister of some generic brand inhalant. “You have allergies too, I see? Spring. It’s a bitch.” He tossed the puffer back into the drawer and shoved it closed with a bang.

“Get out of my office,” bit out Dr Miliotis.

“In a moment.”

“Robert, why did you bring this man here?”

“I... he’s trying to help me.”

“I rather think,” said Dr Miliotis waspishly, “that he’s in need of help himself. Or a thrashing.”

“Oh, thrashings have been tried and failed,” said Sherlock, unconcerned. He rose to his feet, flicking his coat out behind him. “ _So_ sorry to be a bother, Dr Miliotis, but you didn’t answer my question.”

“No,” she said, “I didn’t.”

“Never mind, I can guess why.”

Dr Miliotis arched an acid eyebrow at him.

“Doctor/Patient confidentiality, blah blah, you want to help him, poor lamb, and being institutionalised is so _unhelpful_.”

“I believe I can help Robert and his family before that drastic step becomes a necessity.”

“Of course you do. Good woman. Excellent doctor. I like excellent doctors. I have one of my own. Though I suspect at the moment he’d like to lock me unhelpfully up for a time.”

John sighed. “I wouldn’t wish you on the psych staff.”

“Good man,” Sherlock beamed at him, “I wouldn’t either. I always make them cry for some reason.”

“Arse,” said John, affectionately, “Are you finished?”

“I think so.”

“And…?”

“Not yet. I need time to put the pieces together.”

“Get,” snapped Dr Miliotis, “Out. Of. My. Office. Robert, I will let this pass this time. You are clearly distressed. But this man cannot help you, and if I never see him here again I’ll have him arrested. Get rid of him, and come straight back in to see me. We’ll talk about what you need.”

“Iona, I’m so sorry.” Ferguson was glaring at Sherlock, “I’ll…”

“I’m leaving, I’m leaving! And you, Ferguson, are coming home with us. We have things to finalise with your family.” Sherlock swooped out the door, and Robert, furious, followed him through to make sure he went. John was close behind, but instead of leaving in Sherlock’s wake, he came to a halt in front of the major.

Ferguson’s expression was filled with outrage and despair. “Get out. I’m ashamed of you. I’m ashamed of _me_.”

John stood in his usual self-contained, economical fashion. Solid and unshakable and utterly dependable. “Robert. Do you trust me?”

Ferguson blinked at him. John waited patiently, unblinkingly. He was infinite patience and infinitely stalwart.

After a long moment, Robert found his voice. “Yes,” he said in a whisper.

“And I trust _him_ ,” said John firmly, “With my life. With _more_ than my life. He can be unfathomable at times, and a right little shit with his methods, but if he says you need to go home with us, that’s what you need to do.”

Robert leaned on his cane and grimaced. “He’s disrespectful, rude, callous and insubordinate.”

“Lousy Fusilier material, I know,” John said with a half smile, “He’s also brilliant, insightful and almost always right. Try to think of him as a one-man special ops team.”

Ferguson swallowed. “You trust him, you say?”

“With my soul, if I have one.”

Ferguson nodded, once, making his decision, then he followed John out to the car, where Sherlock was jabbing out a text message and firing it off.

“Are you going to explain yourself?” snarled Ferguson as he arranged himself in the passenger seat.

“No doubt,” said Sherlock, dropping the phone back into his pocket, “I need to check something first. But tell me – did you know Dr Miliotis’s husband?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Father? The son?”

“I knew a Brian Miliotis at the academy, but he was no relation.”

“Hmm.”

On the drive back, Sherlock refused to talk about the case. Instead, he turned the radio up too loud and tapped rhythm on the steering wheel. John leaned forward to rest a hand on Ferguson’s shoulder briefly, and grudgingly, Ferguson maintained his silence.

Back at the cottage, Arty flung himself down the front path and ran to greet his father.

“Daddy! Silly Billy and Mummy are fighting!”

And indeed, they could hear the two voices unfurling at full volume out the front door.

“How dare you bring that man here, Bill? _How dare you_? ”

“I swear, Milena, he can help. I know he can. John promised…”

“Oh you and your _John_ , _Saint_ John, John _fucking_ Watson.” John flinched mildly at her tone, though his expression grew harder as she added, “Not to mention that _unspeakable_ Sherlock Holmes. I wish you’d never brought them here.”

Sherlock, oblivious as always, strode on towards the house. He looked over his shoulder at the last moment, though, towards Arty clinging to his father’s side. “It’s just wind, Arty. Air rattling at the windows. Everything’s going to be all right. I promised, didn’t I?” He waited until Arty and Ferguson were both looking at him, and smiled, before resuming his vigorous pace towards the cottage.

He strode into the kitchen, John, Ferguson and Arty close behind. Bill and Milena’s shouting match, taking place on the tiles, stalled at their approach. Bill shot them a hopeful look while Milena glared poisonously at Sherlock. She drew breath to give him a vitriolic serve, but he pushed straight past her to the refrigerator, to a particular photograph stuck to the door. He snatched it out from under the magnet, peered at it, made a triumphant sound and slapped it on the table, next to one of Ferguson’s nearly spent inhalers.

“Case solved,” he declared, and beamed at everyone in the room.

Everyone in the room was looking at the photograph, trying to fathom his meaning.

John had a photo very like it at home, which he kept with his medals in the box. Afghanistan. 2006. A handful of friends from the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, posing around a Warrior and laughing at the wielder of the camera. Bill Murray and Robert Ferguson were there, unblemished and whole. John Watson, of course. Dasharath Sastry. Tom Okenado. Oliver Miller. Adrian Hickey.

The picture had been taken perhaps only days before the disaster at the village. Days in which Robert Ferguson was still a handsome man, and Bill Murray had all his fingers and both his legs, and Ollie and Tom were still alive, and John ‘The Surgeon’ Watson had not yet added more fodder to the sounds and smells and sights that would haunt his sleeping hours for decades to come.

The day that John was shot and died twice was still two and a half years away.


	8. A Thousand Scenes of Dramavision

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John Watson is a Captain now, and he's determined to avoid another fuck-up of the nature that robbed him of friends, of sleep, of peace of mind. And it's all going so well, this next tour in Afghanistan. Until that sunny day with no signs, no portents, when they should have been safe, and it all went so horribly wrong. The day he died twice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is from Alex Lloyd's Faraway.
> 
> Once more thanks to Kizzia for reviewing this section for me.

The day John got his Captain’s pips, he sat on his bunk at Tidworth and rubbed the pips with his thumb carefully before affixing them to his epaulets. He was proud of them, but there were things besides pride in the achievement. He wished his oldest mates were still around to celebrate with.

He missed Ollie.

He missed Bill and Robert. Bill was still in rehab and learning to walk with a prosthetic leg. He’d heard the news and been chuffed for him. “The unit’s in good hands,” Bill had written in his letter.

John hadn’t heard from Robert, but that was hardly surprising. The Major was still undergoing surgeries, therapy, pain management, the works.

In the corridor, Dash gave him a smart salute, then nodded. “Congratulations, sir.”

“And you, Lieutenant Sastry.”

Dash glanced over at his own new rank insignia, grinned, then sobered. “I hope to live up to them, sir.”

 _I hope you live_ , John thought and then crushed the notion before it could show on his face. “I’m sure you’ll make the Fifth proud, Lieutenant.” Dash grinned again and continued on his way.

When John reported to the Fifth’s Major Absalom, he stood at attention while the officer finished signing some paperwork at his desk. Absalom was making him wait on purpose. John was fine with that. It’s what superior officers did. Asserted their dominance by making you wait. John knew how to play that game himself, when he had to. It wasn’t his preferred leadership style, but he could be versatile. Versatility and responsiveness, he’d always found, were the key, for him at any rate.

Absalom wasn’t so bad. He was no Rob Ferguson, but he’d been rebuilding the Fifth since the disaster that ended the previous tour, in whatever ways he deemed best. Absalom certainly had no hesitation in using the company’s pet sharpshooting medic as part of that strategy. John was aware that Absalom had reservations about him, and the medals didn’t necessarily assuage those misgivings. But Major Absalom knew how to use the assets under his command and he knew that Doc Watson was definitely one.

John didn’t mind that either. He knew the lads looked to him anyway, and he figured his main job was to just do what he’d always done. Try to keep as many people alive as possible for as long as possible, and to look out for his team.

Absalom looked up from his paperwork. “Captain Watson.”

“Sir.” John saluted.

“It seems HQ thinks the Fifth has had enough time to regroup after that balls-up in Afghanistan and they’re sending us back.”

So the rumours had said. John thought it was probably a good thing. He shared the unit’s dislike of having left last time with that awful pall over their good name.

“I take it I can trust you to ensure we don’t have any more fuck-ups of that nature.”

As if anyone could truly promise any such thing. But John only said: “Yes, sir.”

Absalom grimaced. “I don’t suppose you can’t promise not to preside over a fuck-up of an entirely different nature.”

John met the Major’s assessing gaze steadily. “I will endeavour to avoid any and all fuck-ups, sir,” he deadpanned, no trace of snark at all.

The major’s mouth twitched in a grudging smile. “See that you do.”

And for most of the tour, he did. The Fifth operated with economic efficiency, with just the right balance of circumspection and risk; discipline and instinct. The Fifth didn’t lose anyone; there weren’t even many minor injuries. The loss of all those men at the village had, instead of fracturing the team, brought them closer together. Even the new guys. Between them, Absalom and John had made sure of it.

The Fifth Northumberland worked hard and played hard. John didn’t do karaoke any more, but he made sure those under his command had what they needed, on patrol and off. There were the usual frictions and disciplinary actions, but on the whole – the team was strong, they did good work, they helped communities where they could and they kept each other alive.

It was all going so well. John should have known it was about time for it to go all to hell again.

Most of that last day he remembered only in snatches; like snapshots and soundbites, frozen confetti moments of sight, sound, scent and feeling.

The last day was a lot like any other day, until the end of it – coming back from patrol and running across a team of GIs who had strayed out of their patrol zone. The attack that had sent them off path had been dealt with and their convoy was on the way back to base when a jeep blew a tyre. The GIs would have walked back home, but one of their boys had busted up his leg pretty badly.

 _Snapshot._ The Fifth’s timing was serendipitous, only a few minutes after the mishap. John saw to the wounded soldier, splinting up the broken leg as best he could, but he was concerned about the bleeding. Still, it wasn’t too far to the US Kandahar base, so John radioed it in and got permission to accompany the Americans, with a detail, to care for the man.

 _Snapshot._ John sent two of the Warriors and a WMIK back to their own base, and took the second WMIK, manned by Dash, Angus, Drew and Hickey. John rode in the American jeep with the injured man.

 _Soundbite._ The two units ribbing each other about being Limeys and Yanks. The hot sun and the boy with the broken leg telling dirty jokes and forgetting the punchlines because he was muddle-headed with morphine.

 _Snapshot._ The US Captain showing pictures of his kids, including his new daughter, prompting everyone to show around photos. John didn’t have any to show, so he kept an eagle eye out, but it was fine. Nothing hiding in the hills that day. No IEDs. Just birds and a few clouds in the sky, a random goat among the rocks. No portents at all.

 _Snapshot._ The vehicles pulling up just inside Kandahar base and the men dismounting, thinking it was safe. John waiting for the ambulance crew to take delivery of his patient so he and his men could be on their way, and he could see the military ambulance pulling up now.

 _Soundbite._ The Americans greeting the man in robes heading for the gate like he was an old friend. A local policeman, they said. John didn’t catch his name. They said he sold souvenirs for the boys to send home to the States, and intel to the officers.

 _Snapshot._ The Afghani man reminding John of Ahmed, who did some translation work at the British base. A good man, trying hard to help his country in the best way he knew how.

 _Snapshot._ This man-like-Ahmed giving John the strangest look with his light brown eyes, the iris rimmed with yellowish flecks, a shifting array of expressions. Apology. Contempt. Sorrow. Loathing.

 _Snapshot._ John knowing something wasn’t right and he tried to signal to the Americans that something was off, and next to him Drew stepping up, hand to his sidearm, wondering what had made the Doc go all wary like he did on patrol sometimes, wondering what had set The Surgeon’s spidey senses tingling, and one of the Americans felt it too, turned, hand on his pistol, and he raised it warily…

…and then…

… _Snapshot-soundbite._ _The bang. The truncated scream as the Afghani shoots the American in the throat. The blood spurting, a burst of red against the blue sky, and darker spots, flesh and sinew._

__Snapshot._ John squeezes the trigger of his own gun as the Afghani fires at him, but John lurches, shoved out of the line of fire by Dash._

_Snapshot._ _John’s shot goes wide, but the bullet aimed at his own heart burrows into his shoulder in slow slow slow slow motion._

_…and he can feel the passage of it, the impact of the bullet beside the seam of his jacket, which he’d loosened in the heat now they were at a base, were safe, or supposed to be, but weren’t, and he feels it slam into him, into his body, through the skin and into compact muscle and tissue and bone and he feels the bone shatter and he feels it all, every second of it, although there is no way that is truly possible, but he knows how those injuries work, what they do to the body, what they’ll do to **his** body, so perhaps his mind is already building a memory made of knowledge as well as experience as he lays in the bare dirt of the compound bleeding, struggling for breath with the shock of it, feeling the blood pulsing out of his body and into his clothes, into the ground…_

John remembered snapshots and soundbites of the rest of it too. Drew shot in the thigh as he fired. Drew’s bullet one of dozens as the Americans cut down their friendly enemy, only seconds after the first shot.

Those eternal seconds, full of gunfire and screams (some his, some others) and the smell of blood and dirt and piss and rage. Bits of blood and bone and brain matter splashed against his hands and face.

Dash, Angus and Hickey dropped to their knees beside John while all of this happened and gave him the rapid trauma care in which he had drilled them, for years now, tearing back his jacket to inspect the small, bloodied hole that hid the damage underneath. They turned him to find the mess of the exit wound and the blood pouring out to soak into the ground. Unable to find a place to tourniquet, Dash shoved his fingers into the hole in John’s body to crush the arteries shut…

...and _fuck,_ the _pain_ , _Christ, oh Christ, oh Christ the **pain**_ … John had never known anything like it, never; never knew it was even _possible_ to feel pain like that...

And then it stopped, all gone, gone away, and he was grateful for it, even though he knew it meant he was dying. At least it didn’t hurt any more…

…and then the agony began again, and he knew, later he knew, that Angus had rhythmically compressed his chest, making his heart beat (the bruising took weeks to heal) while Hickey breathed for him, and Dash kept his fingers, slick with blood, pressed hard into the awful, gruesome hollow of meat and blood and bone above his scapula, and he loved them and cursed them in equal measure for saving him, for all that pain they gave back to him, for letting him live, _please God, let me live_.

And John knew, later, after the Americans got him in their ER – in the biggest, newest, best equipped military hospital in an active war zone, which gave John the very best treatment at the soonest opportunity that it was possible to get – that his heart stopped again on the table.

But they got it going again, and kept it going, and made him live.

He had died twice that day, and he remembered almost nothing of the being dead.

What he remembered was the pain before dying. The pain of waking up not dead. The _pain_. He remembered the pain and the smell of blood and antiseptic and the pain, the _fucking hell, oh god_ the _pain_.

He was medevac’d to the British camp, and then home to the UK, and he didn’t remember much of that, either. Or the series of operations.

Or the infection.

The seizure, weeks away still, he didn’t remember at all. And it was the seizure, not the bullet, that finally took everything from him.


	9. Into The Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The case is solved, but it's not the end. Hell no. Because the person who has been trying so hard to kill Robert Ferguson is not done yet, and John Watson is about to become collateral damage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This title is from Alex Lloyd's 'Light is On.'

“Enough of this fucking game,” snarled Robert Ferguson, “You know who’s doing this to me, you _tell_ me.”

Sherlock’s brow tightened momentarily and then he shook his head sharply. “No games. There was every chance your wife was the culprit.” He glanced down at Arty’s wide-eyed, frightened expression. “She’s not, though, Arty. Your mother is simply a very dedicated gardener, and she has been very brave. And so have you.”

That didn’t save him from the evil look Milena gave him as she scooped Arty up into her arms, or from Ferguson’s thunderous outrage.

“My _wife_?”

“John, explain, I need to get the weapon.” Sherlock disappeared down the hall, leaving John frowning at his retreating back.

John shouted after him, “Explain _what_?”

“Bob Frankland, Iona Miliotis and the photographs!” Sherlock shouted back impatiently.

For a moment John had that faintly comical expression he got when the penny dropped. He turned on his heel to stare at the table and then he snatched up the photograph. He stared at it. Then he closed his eyes and did a thing that in the last fifteen years he’d learned to do rather well. He mentally reviewed everything that Sherlock had done today and picked it apart, then put it together again.

“Oh,” he said a few moments later, “Oh my god.”

“Don’t you start on this bloody Mystery Theatre bullshit too, Watson, or so help me…” Ferguson growled.

John shoved the photograph towards Robert and jabbed his finger at the image of Oliver Miller. “Don’t you see the resemblance?”

“What resemblance? Who to?”

“To Doctor Miliotis. See here… the earlobes, and look at his hands. The jawline is more masculine of course. I guess Ollie must have taken after his Dad more, but if you know to look… or if you’re Sherlock and you just _see_ these things…”

Bill manoeuvred closer so he could see over John’s shoulder, but as he’d never met the therapist it wasn’t much help. When Milena demanded to see the picture, Bill took it and showed it to her.

“But they don’t even have the same name,” Bill protested.

“People change their names,” said John, “Immigrants often anglicise their names on moving to a new country…”

“Not _these_ days,” said Bill.

“Don’t be naive, Bill,” Sherlock said, sweeping back into the kitchen. He said it without much venom, though, as though this typically was the best he could expect from people, “Find an immigrant from Eastern Europe who wants prospective employers to not toss aside a candidate whose name the idiots in charge can’t pronounce, and ask _them_ about the benefits of camouflage. And in this case, some Greeks and Cypriots who migrated to Britain after the ’74 invasion of Cyprus adopted that type of disguise. Miliotis. Miller. It’s not much of a leap. But now, some individuals have changed their name back, reclaiming their cultural pride, yadda yadda.” He waved his hand to dismiss the dull and obvious subject.

“I still don’t understand,” said Milena, frowning at the picture, “What has this to do with Robert?”

“Iona Miliotis has been poisoning me,” Ferguson told his wife, horrified.

“But why would she…?”

“Why do any of them hate me?” The part of Robert’s face not stiff with scar tissue was suffused in sorrow. “Those letters I get sometimes; all those grieving, angry people. Her son was killed, Milena, under my command. I ordered him into the house where it happened.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Robert.”

“Who else are they going to blame, Mil? Who else is left?”

Milena reached out to him, and Arty too, and the little family clung together for a moment.

“So we have the ‘who’,” said Bill, still puzzled, “But _how_ has she been poisoning Rob?”

“And I still don’t get the Baskerville connection,” John said to Sherlock, examining the photo again.

Sherlock, fingers resting on the item in his pocket, waited very nearly patiently as John pulled thoughtfully on his lower lip. He watched John go through the process of remembering the photographs on Miliotis’s desk.

And John, now that he was thinking about individual features, could recognise the Ollie he knew not only in his living mother, but in that picture of the boy with his parents on her desk. But there was nothing to connect the old family portrait to the hallucinogenic gas that he and Sherlock had suspected from the start played a role in what had been happening to Rob. That connection with Frankland had to be in the _other_ photograph…

“I’m an idiot,” John said.

“Yes, yes,” Sherlock replied, “But generally less so than everyone else. Put a little _effort_ in, John.”

“The graduation photograph on her desk,” John said, looking up, “That was Frankland in the back row, wasn’t it? The profile shot?”

“With the beard, yes, so perhaps that excuses you missing it.”

“Does it?” John knew what the answer to that would be, though.

“Not really.” Sherlock fished out his phone and held it up to John, showing a search result. “It took a little digging, but I found it while I was waiting for you and your Major to have your _tete-a-tete_ outside Miliotis’s office. Frankland and Miliotis were at Cambridge in ’91, although Psych was only one of Frankland’s numerous PhDs for the research he later conducted into a hallucinogen designed to create supersoldiers.” Here, Sherlock was clearly addressing the rest of the class, which was working hard to keep up, “It failed miserably, of course, but it appears he may have maintained contact with his old classmate. They had a shared stake in trying to build better soldiers – she lost so many of her family to war, after all. Her father and a brother in Cyprus before the family migrated to Britain, and then her son.” He tapped on another screen, and there was a text message from Mycroft.

Ferguson was starting to breathe heavily, wheezily, in his distress and anger. He started to cough as well as wheeze, his lungs really not up to the demands of his emotional state, and he reached for the nearest puffer, the one sitting on the kitchen table.

“No!” shouted Sherlock, lunging for the device. John was closer, though, and snatched at it just as Ferguson pressed the pump.

A clear mist clouded into the side of John’s face, and the next moment Sherlock was shoving past everyone, knocking Ferguson against the table and Bill to momentary teetering as he seized John by the collar, dragged him to the sink, twisted on the tap and pushed John’s face under the torrent of cold water. John coughed and struggled, then went pliant as Sherlock scooped handfuls of water and scrubbed them over John’s face, even going so far as to poke his finger in John’s mouth and sluice out his teeth and tongue. John let him, spitting harshly into the sink the moment Sherlock gave him the chance.

Once the spitting was done, Sherlock hauled John, soggy and bedraggled, away from the flow and stared avidly into his eyes, checking the whites. “John? John? Speak to me. _John_?”

John spluttered a little and then glared at Sherlock with the ire of a wet cat. “You know,” he said, “It would be really bloody helpful if you didn’t play the big drama queen some days, and just _told_ me what the fuck you knew _before_ it bit me on the arse.”

“You were supposed to have _worked it out_ ,” said Sherlock, his irritation fuelled, John suspected, by a modicum of guilt.

“I _did_ ,” insisted John, then he grimaced, “Just half an hour after you did. As per bloody usual.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m half drowned, you nearly took my nose off with the scrubbing, I have a headache now, and I thank the _universe_ you cleaned under your fingernails after last night’s experiments with noxious chemicals before sticking said fingers in my mouth, but yeah. I’m fine.” Well, mostly. He felt a little dizzy. He coughed a bit and spat in the sink again.

Sherlock tilted John’s chin up and inspected his eyes more closely. He held a finger up and made sure John could track it. “Tell me if you begin to feel strange. Or aggressive.” He tilted a wry smile at John. “Or _more_ aggressive.”

“Twat,” said John affectionately, “Get out of the way, I have to see to Rob.”

Robert Ferguson was indeed in trouble, collapsed in a chair at the kitchen table with a hand pressed to his chest as he tried to steady his breathing. John issued orders for a bowl to be filled with boiling water and a towel brought. Milena left Arty with Bill and set about getting the supplies arranged, throwing some fresh ginger root and basil into the mix. John figured they couldn’t hurt, and helped Robert sit and lean over the steam, the towel over his head making an efficient little steam tent.

“That’s it,” John said, “Take it easy, Rob. That’s better. Easy, now.”

Sherlock bent to pick up the dropped puffer, and finally laid the one from his pocket beside it on the table.

“Iona Miliotis’s own version of the formula Bob Frankland had been working on,” he told the room, “John and I encountered Frankland’s version a long time ago. We’ll find out later if Miliotis has been working on this the whole time or simply unearthed Frankland’s shared research after finding her new patient was none other than the Major Ferguson who was in command the day her son was killed in action. Either way, she created a replica or a modified batch of the stuff, filled standard inhaler tubes with it and, when the Major went to her for his sessions, replaced his inhaler with the tampered one.”

“But why has it only affected him these last few months?” Bill asked, “He’s been seeing her for a year.”

“The building works down the motorway combined with the spring pollen count means he’s been using the puffer much more often,” John explained, “Bigger doses, taken closer together: worse effects.”

“But what did she _want_? What did she think it would achieve?” asked Milena, tearfully angry.

“Suffering,” said Ferguson, able to breathe better now.

“How _dare_ she?” Milena glared at Sherlock. “And you just _left_ her there in her office? Why didn’t you call the police?”

“The use of that hallucinogen is a government matter,” said Sherlock, “And it’s being tended to by the proper authority.”

Mycroft, in other words. He’d phoned his brother as soon as he’d reached the car. Miliotis was no doubt under arrest by now. Sherlock was just awaiting Mycroft’s confirmation of the fact.

Ah, and there was the ping. Sherlock drew out his phone, stared at the screen, frowned, and then looked with alarm to the door.

“Bill, get Major and Mrs Ferguson and Arty to the study,” he said sharply, “Lock the door. Don’t come out until John or I say it’s safe.”

“What…?” Ferguson sat up straight, the towel he’d had over his head dropping to the table as Bill got his crutches arranged and chivvied a startled Milena and upset Arty down the hall.

“Miliotis wasn’t in her office when the agency came to call,” Sherlock snarled, “It seems she may have recognised you after all, John. I was certain she hadn’t. _Damn it_. John, did you bring your gun?”

John, who had not, searched the kitchen and seized a knife from a drawer by the sink. Robert Ferguson limped to his side and then took the knife beside it.

“You, into the study with your family,” Sherlock said.

“Fuck you,” said Ferguson, adjusting his grip with his good hand.

“Fair enough,” said Sherlock, “Do you have a gun?”

Ferguson grimaced. “I buried it.”

Sherlock sighed. “Of course you did.”

“I was a _danger_ to my _family_.”

“Quite right, too. John…”

John had sidled up to the kitchen window to recce what he could of the front garden and the street.

“Why would she come here and not just leg it?” Ferguson asked, then shook his head at his own unfounded optimism. “Of course she wouldn’t. She’s been planning this for a long time. She’ll want to finish me off.”

John drew back and into a slight crouch at movement he glimpsed outside. He made a hand signal at Sherlock and another at Ferguson. _Enemy without_. _Prepare to engage._

Another set of gestures sent Ferguson limping to take John’s place at the kitchen window while John moved purposefully towards the front door. Sherlock picked up the bowl of cooling water and the discarded towel and edged towards the back door.

And like all the worst things in John’s life, it all went very badly, very quickly. Later, the things he remembered he would remember in snapshots and soundbites.

A roar and splintering of four bullets ploughing through the wood of the back door.

Sherlock throwing himself to one side as the door slammed open.

Sherlock, from that position, flinging the bowl of water at Iona Miliotis’s feet as she charged in, and flicking the towel in her face.

Miliotis, slipping, falling, losing the gun, but with something gripped tight in her other hand.

Her gun clattering across the slippery wooden floor.

Robert Ferguson, lurching towards her, knife at the ready. “Stay away from my family, you vicious lunatic!”

John darting in ahead of Rob, hoping that this would end differently. Without blood. That he would save lives today. Even hers.

John stepping in front of Ferguson as the Major tried to drop to one knee and lunge, aiming to put a quelling knife to her throat.

Miliotis thrusting the inhaler she still held ahead of her.

John reaching for the inhaler, seizing Miliotis by the wrist and twisting it to make her drop it.

Rob losing his balance on his stiff limbs and banging into John on his way to the floor, knocking John off-centre.

The triple hiss of Miliotis pressing the pump three times in rapid succession before John could wrap his hand around hers to make her let go.

The mist of atomised hallucinogen hitting John square in the face and his eyes and, before he could prevent it, his lungs.

Sherlock wresting the inhaler from her grasp as he yelled John’s name.

John fell back, wiping fiercely at his face, but he was disoriented, this coming on top of the previous dose, and the world tilted, the cottage spun around, and it wasn’t a cottage and it wasn’t England and it wasn’t 2025 any more and his heart was pounding and his head was full of visions that looked and smelled and sounded and tasted as real as they had the first time he’d lived them.

A man burning alive ( _I did that, I did that, that’s my fault, should I… what should I…? What’s a right thing to do now?_ ) and children bleeding over his useless hands and children _dying_ and _pieces of people_ falling wetly to the ground along with the clods of earth and the shrapnel, and Ollie’s eyes so afraid ( _I can’t save you, I can’t save you_ ) and cutting through Bill’s smashed leg ( _I don’t want to; I want to save you but I don’t want to do this_ ) and Robert Ferguson burning ( _are they trying to mercy kill you? Are they doing what I wouldn’t do?_ ) and the fatal bullet at a base that was meant to be safe, killing John twice that day ( _please god, let me live_ ), and a dark figure falling from the sky, smashing to earth ( _Sherlock!! No. No. He’s my friend. Please…_ )

And now again the desert and now again the mountains and now again the London pavement awash with blood and now the dunes and now the poppy fields and now Kandahar and the Afghani with hate in his eyes and the bullet pushing through jacket and flesh and bone, going in small, pushing all that compacted matter through and through and through and the pain, the agony of it, and he was dying and he was dying in the dirt still not wholly himself, still lost, and the blood, the blood, all his precious blood soaking into thirsty Afghanistan dirt and _oh Christ, oh Christ, the pain_ …

And then the fire in his body, the infection burning him up, that abscess in his brain he could feel ( _not possible, no way he could feel it, but he can, he can feel that thing waiting to kill him in his brain, waiting to take everything away_ ) and the convulsions of his body as the seizure ended everything…


	10. These Waves Around You, They Keep Crashing In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It wasn't the bullet that ended John Watson's careers, both military and medical. It was the infection and what followed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is from the Alex Lloyd song Far Away (which is a different song to Faraway).

Somewhere in the midst of the series of operations to save his shoulder, John developed a staphylococcus infection. _Staph. aureus_.

Even with the extent of the bullet wound, John might have gone on to a full or nearly full recovery. He might have been able to stay in the army, perhaps in the field – the reconstruction really was very good – perhaps at a desk. Maybe they would have let him switch back to the RAMC. The British Army had spent a lot of money on his training, after all, in one branch or the other of the services. They’d hang on to him if they could.

But _Staph. aureus_ found his wound, and his blood stream, and travelled up into his brain, and there it festered. It built an abscess and it sent his brain haywire.

John Watson had a seizure that lasted seventy four seconds.

The medical staff were excellent. They found and drained the abscess. They finally knocked the infection out of him. They finished the reconstruction of his shoulder and sent him to therapy and took very good care of the very brave soldier wounded in action.

But they couldn’t give him back his life, no matter how long he went without another seizure – because another one could never be fully ruled out.

So they took away his licence to drive, and they took away his position in the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, and they took away his future as a surgeon. You can’t do or be any of those things if you might have a seizure in the middle of a motorway, of active service, of a delicate operation.

They took away all those things, and left him with an intermittent tremor, a limp they couldn’t explain, an insufficient pension and a box full of ribbons stained with horrific memories.

Then they called him healed, gave him a medical discharge and sent John on his way with the bleak conviction that Jack Watson had been right all along.

John Watson was a fuck-up and had next to no use to anyone in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This section and the role it plays in John's medical discharge has been taken largely from the excellent work of [Wellingtongoose](http://wellingtongoose.tumblr.com/post/55637172160/explaining-john-watsons-medical-discharge%20), which demonstrates a more accurate reason why John was discharged even though he certainly appears quite able-bodied these days, and also why he doesn't drive.


	11. Touch Your Heart To Feel The Beat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John has been poisoned and the hallucinations might kill him if Sherlock can't find out how to snap him out of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This title is from Alex Lloyd's My Friend.
> 
> (I was going to post this more slowly, but you know me. NOw the story is written I can't bear to wait...)

Sherlock had no idea what precise action of his triggered the attack. It had doubtless been a mistake to step towards John at all, given what they knew of the hallucinogen’s effect on Ferguson. But better John attack him, who was at least physically capable of countering any attack, than one of the other inhabitants of the house.

John went at him with the knife, fast and strong in spite of John’s disorientation. The blade caught Sherlock the slightest glancing blow to the cheek before he could disarm John – and that wasn’t easy at all, regardless of how well Sherlock knew John’s fighting style and how often they’d sparred. Then John got in three very solid punches before Sherlock was able to drag John down, twist and wrestle him until John was pinned underneath him.

Bleeding from his mouth, his cheek, a cut over his left eye, Sherlock clamped his own body around John’s thrashing form: arms around his arms and torso, legs around John’s thighs, chest pressed hard against John’s back and shoulder and his chin hard against John’s neck. Sherlock’s long frame was thrashing almost as hard but with more purpose as he tried to make John still, to keep him from hurting himself or anyone else.

Dr Miliotis was hunched against the wall, face buried in her hands as she wept. Ferguson was beside her, seated in a chair for stability, his cane at the ready in case he needed to push her back down again, but she seemed a spent force.

Milena Ferguson had returned, clutching onto her whimpering son. Bill made his way over to Rob and used his crutches to tap the inhaler, the gun and the abandoned knife as far away from Miliotis as he could.

John, pinned under Sherlock, was writhing manically now, but without purpose. He wasn’t fighting to get free. He was just fighting.

And John was _roaring_. An awful, raw howl of rage and shock and fear and agony, incomprehensible words and sounds, though sometimes there _were_ words, rasping and filled with desolation. _No_ and _stop_ and _bastards_ and _Sherlock!_

But mostly, it was just that throat-stripping howl.

Sherlock was wrapped around him tight. He shouted John’s name. He murmured it. He said _snap out of it_ and _for fuck’s sake, John, wake up_ and _please, John, listen_ and none of it helped. John bucked in his grip – 53 years old but still strong and fit, that compact strength difficult to restrain – and then John fell briefly still and silent, his teeth gritted, his eyes unseeing and staring through walls at horrors painted in his brain. His harsh breath panted into the cottage, half a sob.

The keening started then, the moan that rose in pitch and volume until John opened his mouth to let out that harrowing pain and he started bucking again. Convulsing, almost.

Sherlock thought John was going to have a heart attack. In his arms. And die, here, in his arms. _Here_. After everything they’d been through. _This_ was how it was going to end.

But it couldn’t. Sherlock wouldn’t allow it. Sherlock Holmes had cheated death time and again and he was damn well going to make sure John cheated it one more time, too, just one more time, if it was the last thing Sherlock ever did. Ferguson had been able to snap out of these fits. John would.

“For god’s sake,” Ferguson croaked, looking up into Arty’s frightened face, “Get him out of here, Mil.”

Arty darted out from behind his mother to clamp his arms around his father. “Daddy.”

Sherlock wished they’d go. He wished they wouldn’t stare so at John.

He wished he knew how Ferguson had been able to snap out of these poison-induced terrors. Milena hadn’t been able to do it. Nor Bill. No. Each time, it had only been the intervention of that little boy that had…

Well, it was a _guess_ – he’d say _hypothesis_ to fancy it up – and at worst it was wishful thinking, but it was all Sherlock had so that’s what he would try.

Arty didn’t figure in any of Ferguson’s nightmares. That was all war and burning and killing, but the voice of his small son was from outside and beyond all that. Arty was the future, and perhaps he was innocence and love as well.

Sherlock wasn’t that, though. He was part of the nightmare John was reliving, twisting and howling-mad and shaking with exertion in Sherlock’s too-tight grip, and Sherlock’s voice had not broken the wall down, and Violet and Ford weren’t here ( _thank god, thank god_ ) but there had to be _something_ he could try to short circuit this horror. Something that would remind John of the children, and of things not of the battlefield.

Again – _Oh._

“ _Once you have eliminated_ ,” sang Sherlock, desperation making his voice high and off-key. He swallowed and tried again, “ _The impossible, what’s ever left, however improbable, must be the truth.”_

He clutched John with all his limbs and tucked his mouth in close to John’s ear. “Come on, John. _The Improbable Song._ Ford and Violet. Come on, now. _“Polar bears in golfing shoes, dogs with fur in greens and blues, crime scenes without any clues, is that very likely?”_

John seemed marginally calmer, but Sherlock couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t just the wishful thinking… _which he never did_ , so it _must_ be working, but not fast enough.

Maybe it was still too much about the Work. The battlefield.

Oh. Of _course_.

And Sherlock held John tighter, and rocked him, even though it took effort – it was more battle than comfort to start with – and he sang.

_Heave a sigh, baby girl,_   
_Don’t you cry, baby girl_   
_Your daddies are guarding the door_

Bill stared, but damn him anyway.

John arched, muscles taut in a way that would probably leave him limping and sore all over tomorrow. _Let him be here tomorrow._ Sherlock continued to sing.

_Laugh out loud, baby girl_   
_Be strong and proud, baby girl_   
_Keeping you safe is what your daddies are for_

And John really did seem to calm a little now.

_You are strong, baby girl_   
_Life is long, baby girl_   
_Your daddies will sing you to sleep_

John stopped fighting Sherlock’s hold so violently, though his body was still straining against it. The anguished keening banked and John’s breath hitched.

_You are smart, baby girl_ _  
_You have heart, baby girl_   
_And the hearts of your daddies to keep_ _._ _

A shuddering breath escaped John, and his whole body was shaking, but the fight was going out of him, then it was gone. Sherlock sang the first two verses again and John shook in his arms like his cells were shattering to bits.

“Sh…sh..erl…ock… I’m …. I’m…”

“Shh,” said Sherlock, bent low against his ear, “You’re all right. I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

“It… hurts.”

“It’s only a memory, John. Let it go. I’ve got you.” Sherlock shifted to his side and held John against his chest. They could both breathe a little easier without Sherlock’s weight pushing John into the floor.

John lifted his shaking hands, and wrapped them feebly around Sherlock’s forearm, clutched across his chest.

“Sherlock?” His voice was broken. His face damp with sweat and tears.

“I’ve got you.”

“I was… there. It was all … there… again… all of it… Christ, Sherlock. _Oh, Christ_.”

Sherlock wrapped John firmly in his arms, exactly as he had done with the children after nightmares, and rocked him again, tiny movements, that universal, gentle sway of comfort for the grief-stricken.

“We’re home. England. It’s long past. You’re safe now. Don’t get up,” when John tried to move, “I’ve got you. Shh. Shh.”

John blinked and saw Robert looking on him with understanding; and Bill, too. Arty was clinging to his father and Milena wrapped them both in her arms, holding them much as Sherlock was holding him, and it was all right, that they were witness to this. They’d served together. They had suffered together, him and Bill and Rob, like him and Sherlock. They’d bled together. They all knew the battlefield and its consequences and it was all okay.

John sagged into Sherlock’s arms, not trying to get up any more. He closed his eyes and let Sherlock hold him safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock sings The Improbable Song and Violet's Lullaby to John.


	12. Lonely Vagabonds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's 2009 when John receives his medical discharge, and he spends the following months looking for reasons to close the drawer on his service revolver. Looking for reasons to keep going for one more day. And then he meets an old friend in a park and agrees to meet a potential flatmate because, really, what's the worst that could happen?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is a lyric from Alex Lloyd's Coming Home.

John’s official Medical Discharge became effective near the end of 2009. That December he was limping around London in the cold just to escape from that depressing bedsit; and the easy solution he kept in his desk drawer.

Every morning John looked in the drawer. Closed it. Went out walking ( _limping_ ) for hours and hours and hours.

Some days, John took his service pistol out and checked that it was in good working order. Then he put it back in the drawer, closed the drawer firmly and went out.

Every day he walked, looking for work or accommodation or something that might mean he didn’t look in the drawer again tomorrow.

There’d still been hope before the seizure. Now? He couldn’t be a soldier. He couldn’t be a surgeon. He couldn’t even fucking _drive_. And was that just a metaphor? Would he be reliant on others for the rest of his life now?

Hardly. Even if he needed others, it wasn’t like John could find someone else to be reliant on. His best mates were mostly either dead, invalided out and still in physical therapy or still in Afghanistan. He didn’t know anyone in civilian life any more. No-one he could turn to, at any rate.

He couldn’t go to Harry. He certainly couldn’t go to his father.

There wasn’t anyone to depend on who would want to help him, even when he could concede he needed the help. There wasn’t anyone who would put up with the screaming nightmares, or the foul-tempered waking hours, or the staring at walls in a reverie or in blankness.

There wasn’t anyone with whom he could just be himself, either. Everyone had an _expectation_ of who he was, or had been, and what he was supposed to be now.

All he was now was a cripple who had failed at everything that had ever mattered. Music. Medicine. Military service.

He knew this was the depression talking, and maybe the PTSD. He’d been warned about it. He’d seen it in others.

But John was sick to his very marrow of being _alone_ ; and of being a piecemeal kind of man. Certainly no-one had ever seen the whole John Watson. He wasn’t sure he’d ever known what that even meant; and if he couldn’t imagine it, why would anyone else see it, and let alone _accept_ all of it. Every contradiction and flaw and failure and success and doubt and hope; and the potential, too, if there was any left.

John wasn’t even sure it was possible to _be_ whole. He was in fragments, and always had been, and always would be.

But… but he wasn’t yet 40. Surely there was something else for him to be. Someone else to become, who could be of use.

 _Please_. 

It was that stupid hope that kept him closing the drawer on the gun again every morning. John wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep that hope alive.

John clutched his stupidly large coffee that was already getting too cold to drink and stomped through the park with his cane and his limp and all this pointless _breathing_ he was doing.

The person in the park spoke John’s name twice before he registered and turned to see – was that Mike Stamford?

It was good to see him, really. Mike was one of those rare souls, always cheerful yet calm; always so kind and _normal_. The kind of man John sometimes wished he could be himself.

“Who’d want me for a flatmate?” he found himself responding, when Mike suggested sharing a place in London would be more affordable. It wasn’t as though Mike had any idea what a bastard John would be to live with these days.

But then Mike wanted him to meet a potential flatmate, a man who apparently was just as difficult as John claimed to be. John wasn’t really in the mood, but what the hell. How much worse could it be than it already was? The worst that could happen was that it would turn out a wash, and he’d just go back to that bedsit ( _death’s waiting room, John kept finding himself calling it)_ and choose again to make it through one more day.

So he said yes, and followed Mike to St Bartholomew’s Hospital.


	13. Coming Undone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The case is solved and the would-be killer is in custody. But it's not quite over yet. John is fragile. It's going to be a nightmare night, and a bad one - but why won't he let Sherlock help? When John finally goes to his friend, he is suffused in grief and shame. 
> 
> But Sherlock isn't just anyone. Sherlock is the one who saved him, just as he saved Sherlock, and whatever life was like before, John's not alone any more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is another lyric from 'Far Away' by Alex Lloyd.

Mycroft’s people arrived a few minutes later ( _better late than never, joked one wag, and Sherlock nearly eviscerated him with a look_ ). By then, John was sitting at the kitchen table, clutching a mug of builder’s brew in hands that were still trembling. Dr Miliotis’s hands were pinioned with bindings made of torn tea towels and she sat opposite John, defeat making her grey and bleak. She’d aged twenty years in the last twenty minutes.

Sherlock was holding a cloth packed with ice cubes against his abrasions that John flinched to see.

Milena had taken Arty away to calm him down in the greenhouse, surrounded by lush vegetation and warm earthy scents, while Robert Ferguson and Bill Murray kept their hobbling guard on their prisoner.

As the agents handcuffed Dr Miliotis she jerked her chin up in a last ditch effort at defiance. “I’m not sorry,” she said viciously to Ferguson, “You killed my boy.”

“Actually,” said John tiredly, “Ollie’s death was _my_ fault.”

She glared at him. “No,” she said, “You were his friend. He called you Timon in his letters, sometimes. John Watson, the Timon to my Pumbaa, he said. You sang silly songs for the Afghani children. You made him laugh, he said.”

“It was my fault,” John repeated, “I wasn’t fast enough. We didn’t think Atash would fire. We were… I was wrong. I hesitated and Ollie died, and that was my fault.”

“No,” Miliotis said again, tearfully, “You killed the man who killed my boy. They gave you a medal for it.”

John shook his head. “I shot a boy who was just trying to work out how to protect his family. It was a waste of everyone. Ollie, Atash, Tom Okenado. Jack Davis. Tyler Gaines. Bill and Rob, too. What happened that day. There weren't any heroes. Just people trying to work out how to protect each other, and failing."

Then Mycroft’s agents led Miliotis away to the black van parked outside, and John looked back down into his tea.

“What will happen to Ollie’s mum?” asked Bill.

Sherlock shifted the ice pack on his face. “She’ll lose her licence to practise psychology at the least. I expect there’ll be a prison sentence. Or something very like one.” He would be happy to see her locked in a cage at Baskerville and left there, personally.

Robert Ferguson was surprisingly the one to show compassion for the woman who had tried to destroy him and his family. “Not all casualties happen on the battlefield, Holmes,” said the Major steadily, “And not every survivor thrives. Some of them just stay broken.” He rested a hand on John’s shoulder and squeezed, “And it wasn’t your fault, John.”

John sighed. “Maybe not. There weren’t really any win-win scenarios in the house that day.” He pushed his chair away from the table with a scrape and looked to Sherlock. “Are you all right to drive?” His eyes flickered over Sherlock’s various cuts and contusions.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Sherlock pitched the stained tea towel he’d used on his face into the bin, straightened his jacket and put on a devil-may-care expression. “I’ve looked worse after one of Violet’s more creative efforts with short-sheeting my bed.”

John’s mouth pulled up on one side in one of those this-shouldn’t-be-funny-but-it-is smiles.

There were thanks, and promises to catch up soon, and an aloe vera cutting in a pot from Milena ‘to begin those empirical studies you were so insistent upon’ and a hug from Arty, who flung himself at Sherlock like they were old pals. “Bye, Sherlock,” he said, and kissed Sherlock’s bruised face to make it all better.

“Goodbye Arty,” said Sherlock, submitting himself solemnly to this painful act of first aid, “And I think the east wind won’t be so scary now that your father will be replacing his inhalers.”

“If the wind shouts at me,” Arty told him, “I’ll shout back.”

“Good boy.”

Sherlock opened the car door for John then, once he was settled, slid into the driver’s seat and they were away. Sherlock put the radio onto a classical channel. Ten minutes later, John switched it to a classic rock channel. Ten minutes after that, Sherlock returned to his first selection. Then John reclaimed the dial. They did this, not speaking aloud, but giving each other the arched eyebrow, the sardonic glare, the twitch of a smile, for all the long drive home.

It was late by the time they got home and they both limped upstairs. Sherlock was fairly certain he was bruised all over his shins, arms and chest as well as his face from the struggle to keep John pinioned to the floor. From the way John held himself so gingerly, he had his own set of pulled muscles and bruises to contend with.

“John…”

“I’m fine, Sherlock.”

That was patently untrue, but Sherlock wasn’t sure how to approach the subject, except bluntly, and he thought that perhaps there’d been enough bluntness today.

John treated the worst of Sherlock’s injuries, and he didn’t seem to be more than appropriately remorseful about them. It wasn’t like any was deliberately inflicted. But John was particularly gentle with the cleaning and dressing of the wounds. He handed Sherlock the cream for the bruises. “I’ll get that back when you’re done,” he said, and limped off to defrost and reheat a chicken curry Nirupa and Violet had concocted for them before their most recent trip.

After a sparing supper, John poured a scotch and lowered himself tentatively into his armchair.

“I’ll stay up with you,” began Sherlock, because this was so obviously going to be a nightmare night, and a very bad one, but John shook his head.

“No need. I’m good.”

Lies, lies and more lies and Sherlock didn’t know quite what to do about them. It had been over a decade since John had pretended to not have nightmares, or indeed had to suffer through them alone.

Sherlock played a little violin, which seemed to calm John, but afterwards John buried his face in a music journal and refused to talk.

“Well. Good night, then,” said Sherlock in a pointed tone, “You know where I am if…”

John ignored him. Sherlock went to his room, changed into pyjamas and then, with the door ajar, sat against the bedhead and listened.

There followed three hours of John sitting, motionless, apparently, but for the occasional creak of the chair, interspersed with minutes of John pacing the room before sinking with a sigh back into his seat.

Sometimes John’s breathing was even; sometimes a low, tense exhale. Sometimes it was ragged, as though John was struggling for control. John never struggled for control in his waking hours. Perhaps it was the after effects of the hallucinogen. Perhaps it was simply the after effects of the vivid memories.

Sherlock wondered why John wanted to shut this away from him. They didn’t shut things off from each other any more.

But this was an old wound made bleeding-fresh. The toxin had reactivated memories with a clarity that was cruel. Sherlock extrapolated what must have been happening in John’s mind, for his body to become so violent and convulsed, by imagining being forced to relive any part of the Year in Hell, and the very attempt made him feel ill.

Eventually, however, Sherlock’s door opened and John stood in the frame, shivering, breathing in sudden little gasps.

He didn’t cry, John, as a rule, but this was as close to it as Sherlock had ever seen. Gasping for air like every breath costs him five minutes of life.

_He looks afraid, and ashamed._

Sherlock rose and when John didn’t respond, Sherlock took him by the elbow and guided him to the bed. He made John lay down, then took his shoes off. He loosened John’s belt and John let him, because his own hands were still trembling.

Then Sherlock lay beside him on the bed, both of them on their backs, Sherlock being careful not to touch John at all.

“I can’t close my eyes,” John said, “I keep seeing the man I set on fire. Or Rob, screaming that his skin was burning. Or… cutting through Bill’s leg to get him out from under the jeep.” His voice shook. “They gave me a medal for saving them, but sometimes, even before that damned poison, I can smell burned flesh. I can taste the grease of it in the back of my throat. Sometimes I can’t bear the sounds of a bonfire.”

John’s shaking worsened. Sherlock reached out and after the briefest hesitation, placed a hand over John’s and squeezed. John turned his hand over till they were palm to palm, and gripped Sherlock’s hand hard.

“I don’t believe in God,” said John, “But sometimes I believe in hell, and that was it. That day was it. That burning truck was it. And then on another quiet day, when everything was sunny and fine, and we were through the gates of the US base, we were meant to be safe – and that’s when I got shot in an ambush. Not even on my own damned base. One minute we were laughing, waiting for the medics to take a patient off my hands so we could leave, and the next, some local, with clearance, just shoots us. Like ducks in a row. The only reason I’m not dead is that Dash shoved me out of the line of fire. And they shot the guy, dozens of bullets, blood and brains everywhere, all over me, but I was already going into shock. I died. Right there on the road. Dash, Hickey and Angus brought me back, but I died out there.”

John’s eyes were closed and his hand crushed Sherlock’s.

“After everything that happened, everything I’d achieved and survived, it all came crashing down in a few seconds. My mates saved my life because I’d made them the best in triage and field first aid, and they were right there when I needed them. But it hurt like a motherfucker to not be dead, and for a little while, I wished they’d let me go. I nearly got my wish on the operating table. But we’re a stubborn lot, army doctors. They got my heart going again.”

John took a juddering breath and slowly released his bruising grip on Sherlock. Sherlock squeezed John’s hand hard, letting him know he didn’t need to let go. So they lay there, hands still clasped, though not tightly.

“I nearly died anyway,” John continued, “From the staph infection and the seizure, and it left me with an ‘unreliable brain’, the specialist said. I couldn’t go back to the infantry, I couldn’t go back to the RAMC. Twenty seconds. One bullet. And it was all over.”

John let go of Sherlock’s hand at last and shoved the heels of his hands into his eyes, his face screwed up.

“And I thought then, and I still think sometimes, why did I leave the RAMC for the infantry? Why did I choose to go into battle and take lives as well as save them? And that’s the answer right there. I did it to be more direct. To save lives sooner. And then I remember that day, and losing Ollie, and all the death and the two lives I managed to drag out of that hellhole, but I didn’t do it for them. I did it for me. I didn’t want to let death win. I think because no one could save my mother. And I think what an arrogant bastard I was. _Am_. To think I made a difference.”

Sherlock turned onto his side to regard John lying there, shaking, covering his face that was filled with grief and shame.

“You made a difference. To Bill. To Ferguson and his wife and son. You make a difference to _me_. You make a difference all the time. Perhaps it is arrogant. Why not be arrogant? You have done things no-one else dared.”

John just shook his head.

Sherlock swallowed, then shifted across the bed, closer to his friend, and very carefully he stretched an arm across John’s waist. He didn’t try to pull John closer but he left his arm there, and John didn’t ask him to move.

“I will not tolerate the least criticism of your choice, John. Not even from you.”

“So many died.”

“You couldn’t save them all.”

“I know. It’s arrogance to think it. I know.”

“But you did what you could. You always do everything you can. For you it’s never enough. Your arrogance is perhaps in thinking that you could somehow win a war alone. That it was _your_ responsibility.”

“I know it’s not.” But there was pain in John’s voice, as though he knew he would always take that responsibility on anyway.

“You cannot go back in time to save your mother, John. All you can do is the best you can. And your best is significantly better than most people’s.”

“It’s not enough.”

John started to turn away, but Sherlock tightened his hold and suddenly, instead of facing the wall, John turned inward, turned towards Sherlock’s body and Sherlock found he was holding John, cradling him, running his arms over his shoulders and back and holding him gently and even pressing his mouth to John’s hair.

“It’s all right, John. Hush, now. It’s all right.” And he kept on saying it until John’s shaking subsided and his breathing evened out.

“Sorry,” said John. “Rough day. I got poisoned.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” said Sherlock. John huffed a laugh but stayed where he was in the safe circle of Sherlock’s embrace.

“It is enough, John, what you do,” said Sherlock after a moment, “And more than.”

“I know. I do. But some days… Some nights. Some nightmares. Everything is burning and everyone is dying and I’m bleeding out, or having convulsions, and I can’t do anything to help.”

“You have never failed me,” Sherlock said firmly, “Even when I was… Away. I left you with so little, and you did everything you could and more with that very little I was able to leave for you. How could you have done more than you did? In any case, you are _one_ man. An extraordinary one, perhaps, but only one. Afghanistan was too big a war for your ambition. But the one we fight here in London – that is the right size for you and me. Let my brother work on the scale of nations. This city is sufficient for us, and we are _two_ extraordinary men.”

“Yes.” John huffed another laugh, sounding more like himself, “Yes. We are.”

“And we achieve more together than either of us could ever do alone.”

“Yeah,” said John, “We do.” He moved away then to lie looking at the ceiling in the dark, though his hand was still fisted in Sherlock’s shirt. “I don’t know if I can sleep.”

“Fine. We’ll stay awake. But rest.”

This time John turned onto his other side, facing away, but a moment later Sherlock had moved too, and was spooning him. Not too close, but with one arm tucked over John’s waist.

“Is this all right?” Sherlock asked, suddenly unsure.

John considered it. For all the nightmare nights they’d shared a bed, they hadn’t slept quite like this before. But Sherlock was warm and solid at his back; his arm circling John’s waist was anchoring, though light enough that John could easily rise from bed if necessary. Far from feeling awkward or even trapped, John felt secure. Sherlock had his back; he was safe.

“Yes.” John exhaled a long sigh, the tension leaving him, “Yeah. It’s… good.”

They both lay awake for a long time, breathing steadily. Sherlock was obviously timing his breaths with John’s and then slowing those breaths down. John knew what Sherlock was doing, but he let it work, slowing his own breaths to match Sherlock’s.

He found sleep at last, and there were dreams but something solid in them kept the worst of it at bay. In his dreams, he wasn’t fighting his battles alone.


	14. Found a Home Inside a Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Sherlock found each other in London; and because of that, John finally found himself. 
> 
> And there was one more time that John found Sherlock poking around among the medals and citations. After Sherlock returned from the year in Hell, plagued by his own nightmares and PTSD. John wasn't angry that time. He knew that Sherlock was trying to understand something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another lyric from Coming Home by Alex Lloyd.

When John first returned to London, there were some good days among the bad. Days when he knew he’d done good work. His music had been worthwhile, and had saved him for a time. He’d been a good doctor; he’d been a good soldier. Although he’d struggled to find his place, and he’d changed paths several times, he had been good, damnit, at all of them.

None of that seemed to matter on the bad days, when he knew he was exactly the failure his father said he was; when he knew that every choice he’d made to try to find himself had been the wrong choice, until now it seemed he had no choices at all.

But then came Sherlock Holmes, and everything changed. And it seemed that this was what John had been preparing for all his life. His medical knowledge and his military experience. His ability to both lead and follow and to know when each was required. Courage and ruthlessness and kindness and circumspection, all with their right place at the right time.

Together they saved people – not only their clients, but Sherlock, too. Right at the start, John had saved the person who saved others, and eventually he came to learn how many ways in which that was true.

Then Sherlock found out about the old band. He encouraged the music back into John’s life, and then made it part of their shared lives – and the last piece slotted into place. 

For the first time in his life, John was truly whole. Truly home. Truly everything he was and could be. Truly himself, and seen, and accepted.

At last. 

Once, not long after Sherlock’s return from Away, John found him looking at his box of medals again, and the song about them. This time, John was puzzled rather than cross, because Sherlock was so clearly trying to understand something.

“You don't do it for honour,” John said to the question Sherlock hadn’t asked. "You do it for the one who fights beside you and the one that has your back. You do it for your mates and a maybe for yourself.”

Sherlock stared at him, his eyes dark-rimmed with nightmares and lack of sleep. John picked up the topmost medal – his Conspicuous Gallantry Cross – and pressed it into Sherlock’s hand. Sherlock recoiled. 

“I'm not mocking you,” said John, folding Sherlock's hand over the ribbon and metal, “You understand it now. You understand the weight of it.”

“I'm…”

For an uncomfortable moment, John thought Sherlock was about to apologise again, and he didn’t want that. This wasn’t the moment for platitudes of _I’m sorry that your friends died; I’m sorry for the ones that were maimed; I’m sorry you were shot._ Even if those words were true, they were not what John wanted or needed from Sherlock.

“I'm unspeakably glad you survived,” said Sherlock at last. 

John smiled lopsidedly. “Me too. About you, I mean. So glad.” 


	15. Be Safe Today, It's Ok

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning comes and yesterday's nightmare is done. This is their life now. Love and family and friends; the bright future that once seemed out of reach. It's like they said at the start. None of them merely _survived_. They _flourished_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is from Alex Lloyd's Save My Soul.

John woke up relatively rested and calm. It hadn’t been the best of nights, true. He’d been restless and woken frequently.

But Sherlock had stayed awake all night, and each time John jerked awake in fear, there was an arm around his waist, a warm body at his back, a deep voice telling him, “John. It’s all right. We’re home in Baker Street”. And they would breathe together until John could subside back into sleep.

Over breakfast – home made English muffins and jam, carried up by Mrs Hudson, who seemed to have a sixth sense for when comfort food was required – John’s tablet buzzed and he answered it eagerly. Mary, Rupe and Violet were making their daily call home while travelling.

“Baby girl!” John grinned at his daughter, “And my best girls!”

“Daaaaad,” protested Violet.

“Quite right,” Sherlock threw in over John’s shoulder, “Violet’s ten years old now, John.”

“She’s still my baby girl,” insisted John, mostly to see Violet’s face go fierce and then poke her tongue out at him, before her mouth made a shocked Oh!

“Sherlock, what happened to your _face_?”

Three far away faces crowded close to the screen to inspect the black and blue damage partially concealed with a plaster over the cuts. John frowned but Sherlock only waved a hand at them.

“It’s nothing. A short elderly Greek doctor of psychology caused these yesterday, but she’s now in custody and no longer a danger to asthmatics.”

Violet pouted at him. “You think you’re a smarty pants, Sherlock Holmes, trying to confuse me with all your facts out of context, but I know you’re just covering up the fact you didn’t duck fast enough again.”

“You’re quite right,” said Sherlock, happy to be corrected by their girl, “I shall have you instruct me on more effective evasive manoeuvres on your return.”

“Did Dad show him what for?”

“ _Her_ , and… your father was exemplary under trying circumstances, as always.”

John sighed. “Your second dad is once more being flexible with the truth, Violet.”

“She didn’t get you too, did she Dad?”

Mary squinted at the screen, clearly peering at his image at the other end. “You okay, babe?”

“I’m fine, Mary.”

“She got you too, didn’t she? The cow.” Mary scowled.

“She did a bit, but it’s all right. She was just a very wretched, very sad, very angry woman. But Sherlock did his thing, nobody died, and a kid called Arty told Sherlock he looked funny, so it was a good day.”

“Aww,” said Mary, smiling at Sherlock, “Arty had no call to point out the fact that you look funny.”

Sherlock shrugged in grand long-suffering. “I applaud the child for his skills of observation and forthright courage in bringing it to my attention. I shall endeavour to look less funny in future.”

“Oh, don’t,” said John, grinning at him, “We like your funny face.”

“And your funny hair,” giggled Violet.

“Ignore the plebs,” Rupe told him, “Your hair is divine and you’re quite the prettiest man I’ve ever met.”

The conversation only occasionally got more sensible than that over the next hour. In the middle of it, John’s phone rang, so Sherlock commandeered the tablet and, since Mary, Rupe and Violet were in South America at the moment, began instructing Violet on how to conduct a few rudimentary experiments on aloe vera plants.

John smiled at his family as he picked up the phone. It was Robert Ferguson, passing on his thanks. “He’s a handful, that mate of yours,” said Rob, “But he delivers, just like he said he would. Arty’s quite taken with him. He’s named his toy giraffe Sherlock.”

John snickered down the line.

“Don’t be too amused,” Rob said with a laugh, “He’s called the penguin John. I think it’s the height difference.”

“I’ll live,” said John, choosing to keep to himself the fact that Violet still had a soft toy hedgehog that she called Prickle or Huggle, depending, as Sherlock had deduced, on whether John was being a grumpy bum that day. He’d take a penguin over Prickle the Daddy Hedgehog any day.

“Anyway. I just wanted to thank you both. You don’t know what it means to us.”

“You’re very welcome, Rob.”

“Catch up soon for a beer, eh? You, me and Bill?”

“That would be good,” John agreed.

He wandered back to the kitchen table, where Rupe was now apparently doing an impersonation of a howler monkey, or rather the project’s bad tempered accountant, and Sherlock was deducing either stomach ulcers or a romance gone sour in explanation. He could see Mary’s face on the screen, lighting up on seeing him and gesturing that she was going to call him privately. She snuck away from Rupe and Violet, who was now taking up the howler monkey impersonation.

John answered his phone on his way up the stairs to his room.

“Hey beautiful,” Mary said, the heat of her tone making him feel warm from scalp to toes, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah,” he said, getting to his room and stretching out on the mattress, “It was a bit rough, but it’s all good. I’ll tell you about it when you get back. Tell me more about this howler monkey accountant of yours.”

“I’d rather tell you what I’m wearing. Which is no panties.”

“You’re a bad girl, Mary Morstan.”

“If only we had time to be _properly_ bad,” she sighed dramatically, “But since we don’t, I’m just going to tell you about the black satin knickers I want you to buy for me, and that when I get home again, how I want _you_ to be wearing them under your jeans for our reunion.”

“Not under the kilt?”

“I have something else I’m getting you for under the kilt, beautiful.” And she proceeded to describe both the black satin knickers and the something else he could expect if he had been a _very bad boy_ …

At the end of the call, John lay on the bed (jeans in disarray, with Mary’s wicked encouragement; god they were like teenagers still, sometimes). His body still ached from the previous day’s abuses, but instead of feeling shattered, he felt at peace. Calm and content. Safe and whole.

Downstairs, Sherlock was playing the violin – a slow, sweet version of _Illuminated_.

In his room, John closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and revelled in the knowledge that, in spite of everything, he and Sherlock (and Rob Ferguson and Bill Murray) had not only survived but _thrived_. They had futures, and they were bright.

 


End file.
